Product Description

This volume represents virtually all of Wilburs published poetry to date, including his six earlier collections, twenty-seven new poems, and a cantata. Winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #598965 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-01
• Released on: 2001-01-12
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.00" h x 9.00" w x 6.00" l, 1.35 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From Amazon.com
These collected poems of the Poet Laureate of the United States are, despite the prevailing view of modern poetry, a monument to the accessible and the beautiful. The language is lush, full "of heat and juice and heavy jammed excess," and deeply thoughtful. His concern for careful human stewardship of nature extends also to the artist's creative struggle to capture the truth of the world. One poignant poem, "The Writer," addresses this through his reaction to listening outside the door as his daughter earnestly struggles to compose a story on her typewriter: "It is always a matter, my darling/Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish/ What I wished you before, but harder." The collection won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1989.

From Publishers Weekly
"Reprinting six of his principal verse collections, this omnibus displays Wilbur's many facets as nature poet, mordant commentator on social mores, philosophizer and as a translator adept at capturing the varied moods of poets as different as Voznesensky,Voznesensky in web.3/lk Borges and Jean de la Fontaine. Included also are 27 new poems, plus the cantata 'On Freedom's Ground'," observed PW. The volume won the Pulitzer Prize.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
$27.95. poetry That nature and imagination are the two poles of Wilbur's creativity is evident in this volume's opening poem, "The Ride," in which Wilbur rides an imaginary horse in his dreams and, upon awakening, wants to give it "some hay, some water to drink,/ A blanket and a stall." The poem could be taken as a metaphor for Wilbur's best work, which always leaves the reader with a strange vividness and a painful sense of loss. Following the 27 new poems in the opening pages is "On Freedom's Ground," a cantata text done in collaboration with the composer William Schuman. The rest of this magnificent volume reproduces (in reverse order) all of Wilbur's six earlier books, from The Mind-Reader (1976) to The Beautiful Changes (1947). A fitting tribute to the poet laureate of the United States. Essential. Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.