SOURCE: Faverty, Frederic E. “‘Well-Open Eyes’: Or, the Poetry of Richard Wilbur.” In Poets in Progress: Critical Prefaces to Ten Contemporary Americans, Edward Hungerford, pp. 59-72. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1962.

In the following essay, the writer discusses how Wilbur's A Bestiary modifies and builds on the original medieval text Wilbur translated.

Everything in the world is strange and marvellous to well-open eyes. This faculty of wonder is the delight … which leads the intellectual man through life in the perpetual ecstasy of the visionary. His special attribute is the wonder of the eyes. Hence it was that the ancients gave Minerva her owl, the bird with everdazzled eyes.

(José Ortega y Gasset, Revolt of the Masses.)¹

For a comparatively young poet, Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) has received considerable recognition from official quarters: the Harriet Monroe Prize in poetry, 1948; the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, 1950; the Edna St. Vincent Millay Memorial Award...