WALKING TO SLEEP

by Richard Wilbur ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 1969

Of all the elegant younger poets of the Fifties, Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) was the most elegant, graceful, witty, assured, and talented. No one of his generation could produce fresher, more attractive and finished poems. The titles themselves -- ""The Beautiful Changes,"" ""Grace,"" ""Conjuration,"" ""Clearness,"" ""Lightness""-- perfectly reflected Wilbur's luminous art, the modesty of his moral concerns, his sophisticated, gravely humorous praise for ""things of this world."" With the Sixties, however, Wilbur's fastidiousness (Randall Jarrell: ""Mr. Wilbur never goes too far, but he never goes far enough"") came to be tagged academic, and the once charming and highly influential manner was almost completely overshadowed by the arrival of the Beats and the new ""confessional"" mode of Lowell and Berryman. In a word, Wilbur lacked drama: his voice, though still recognizably his own, seemed too smooth, above all too impersonal, and in an era where ""telling it like it is"" meant unburdening one's soul, Wilbur appeared to have no ""secrets,"" no hard and jagged revelations. This was true of Advice to a Prophet, published in 1962, and is even more true of Walking To Sleep, undoubtedly the slightest collection of poems he has yet presented. With the exception of ""The Lilacs,"" ""Fern-Beds,"" ""Seed-Leaves,"" ""A Wood; and ""The Proof,"" it seems to entomb his famous virtues. Growth is essential to any artist: one must strike new roots, different perspectives. Wilbur is still cultivating the sensibility of his youth, with the unhappy result that his latest works -- lyric, descriptive, meditative -- have the serene deadness of museum pieces: exquisite, exacting, and lifeless.

Pub Date: March 12, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION