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I would feel dead if I didn't have the ability periodically to put my world in order with a poem. I think to be inarticulate is a great suffering, and is especially so to anyone who has a certain knack for poetry.

Richard Wilbur

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Richard Wilbur
Age: 96 †
Born: 1921
Born: March 1
Died: 2017
Died: October 14
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Richard Purdy Wilbur
Richard Wilbur
World
Didn
Poem
Certain
Poetry
Feel
Especially
Feels
Dead
Great
Anyone
Would
Suffering
Periodically
Think
Ability
Inarticulate
Thinking
Order
Knack

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Most women know that sex isgood for headaches.
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The eye is pleased when nature stoops to art.
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To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle, When in fact you haven't of late, can do no harm.
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Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole/ And casting out myself, become a soul.
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What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.
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Writing is?waiting for the word that may not be there until next Tuesday.
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We know what boredom is: it is a dull Impatience or a fierce velleity, A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude, To make or do. In the strict sense, of course, We invent nothing, merely bearing witness To what each morning brings again to light
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Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels.
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What you hope for Is that at some point of the pointless journey, Indoors or out, and when you least expect it, Right in the middle of your stride, like that, So neatly that you never feel a thing, The kind assassin Sleep will draw a bead And blow your brains out.
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Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia.
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It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired they constitute his ideal audience and his better self.
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Columbus and his men, they say, Conveyed the virus hither Whereby my features rot away And vital powers wither Yet had they not traversed the seas And come infected back, Why, think of all the luxuries That modern life would lack.
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All that we do is touched with ocean, and yet we remain on the shore of what we know
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The strength of the genie comes from being in a bottle.
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What is our praise or pride but to imagine excellence and try to make it? What does it say over the door of heaven but, homo (sapiens) fecit?
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Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind. Something will come to you.
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A thrush, because I'd been wrong, Burst rightly into song In a world not vague, not lonely, Not governed by me only.
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That's the main business of the poem!-to see if you can't make up a language that sets all your selves talking at once-all of them being fair to each other.
Richard Wilbur
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Whatever pains disease may bring Are but the tangy seasoning To Loves delicious fare.
Richard Wilbur