Richard Wilbur | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 2 pages of analysis & critique of Richard Wilbur.

Richard Wilbur | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 2 pages of analysis & critique of Richard Wilbur.
This section contains 388 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by M. L. Rosenthal

[In] Things of This World Richard Wilbur seems beset by a sort of ennui, the result of a conceptual dependence which bedevils him with an especially treasonous subtlety. Though he is still one of our better poets, the things his poetry says and lives by are so much of the essence of the modern Anglo-American heritage that others have already preëmpted the original and audacious modes of expression he might otherwise use. Compare his "An Event" with Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," for instance. The younger poet has been almost forced into a blander, more discursive tack, for which even his highly developed grace and skill of rhetoric cannot fully compensate. Rhetoric, incidentally, is put to sharper use in the one political piece here: "Speech for the Repeal of the McCarran Act." Genuine poetic energy and concreteness quicken the effect of this piece, which...

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This section contains 388 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by M. L. Rosenthal
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Critical Essay by M. L. Rosenthal from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.