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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.

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
Better
Congress
Dwell
Self
Poet
Neighbors
Great
Taught
Address
Mind
Audience
Addresses
True
Directly
Doe
Ideal
Persons
Neighbor
Constitute
Back
Ideals
Admired

More quotes by Richard Wilbur

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Writing is?waiting for the word that may not be there until next Tuesday.
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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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Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind. Something will come to you.
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Most women know that sex isgood for headaches.
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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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Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels.
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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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What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.
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Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia.
Richard Wilbur
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Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole/ And casting out myself, become a soul.
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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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Whatever pains disease may bring Are but the tangy seasoning To Loves delicious fare.
Richard Wilbur
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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?
Richard Wilbur
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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.
Richard Wilbur
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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
Richard Wilbur
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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.
Richard Wilbur
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The strength of the genie comes from being in a bottle.
Richard Wilbur
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The eye is pleased when nature stoops to art.
Richard Wilbur
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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.
Richard Wilbur