Richard Wilbur does what he does well and gladly, learns new ways and enjoys them too. The charges against him are mostly compliments. Yes, he has mastered the iambic line and some other meters; yes, he wears his grace with ease; yes, his poems respond to his control. But these virtues do not set him necessary limits. The counter-evidence is too much present in his work for anyone truly to claim, "Here in a well-lit salon you must of need stay, the crystal polished, the corners cleared." The counterevidence is the pure loveliness becoming, sometimes against his protestations, in its very purity transcendent; lies in the many fine and memorable phrasings; and must include, among poems published in books prior to 1976, "Two Voices in a Meadow" and the longer poem Walking to Sleep. (p. 294)

[I speak] as an early and continuing admirer, and speak in approval. And yet...