SOURCE: Farrell, John P. “The Beautiful Changes in Richard Wilbur’s Poetry.” Contemporary Literature 12, no. 1 (winter 1971): 75-87.

In the following essay, Farrell responds to the critical argument that Wilbur is insensitive to modern issues that modern poet’s like T. S. Eliot addressed, posing that if Wilbur “seems to have made peace with the modern world, he has not bargained blindly …”

The time is past when Richard Wilbur could be dismissed as a poet who writes “prayers on pinheads.”¹ But we still hear of his “ignoring of the dark,” and, in general, it may be said that he is not yet quite taken seriously even by readers who admire his work. The feeling has been that, in the long run, Wilbur’s poetry, for all its qualities, doesn’t matter, or doesn’t matter in a large way. It has not that range and power that makes some...