Anterooms: New Poems and Translations

A Measuring Worm

This yellow-striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.

It’s as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn’t know it,
He will soon have wings,

And I too don’t know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.

This poem opens the first section of Anterooms and sets the tone for the rest of the collection. It is a poem of the small, the quotidian; it speaks of the regular events that measure our lives, the normal everyday routines that, inch by inch, lead us towards, who knows what.

Richard Wilbur is an award-winning poet and translator. His work spans seven decades and many awards. He was born in New York and grew up in New Jersey. He graduated from Amherst College in 1942 before serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. After the Army Wilbur attended graduate school at Harvard University, then taught at Wesleyan University for two decades and at Smith College for another decade. At Wesleyan he was instrumental in founding the award-winning poetry series of the Wesleyan University Press. He married Charlotte Hayes Ward, a student at nearby Smith College, in 1942, after his graduation from Amherst. He is currently teaching at Amherst College.

Wilbur’s honors include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award, both in 1957 for Things of This World, the Edna St Vincent Millay award, the Bollingen Prize, and the Chevalier, Ordre National des Palmes Academiques. In 1987 Wilbur became the second poet, after Robert Penn Warren, to be named U.S. Poet Laureate after the position’s title was changed from Poetry Consultant. In 1989 he won a second Pulitzer, this one for his New and Collected Poems. On October 14, 1994, he received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton. In 2006, Wilbur won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. In 2010, he won the National Translation Award for the translation of The Theatre of Illusion by Pierre Corneille. His translation of Moliere’s Tartuffe is recognized as the English standard.

As you would expect from a writer in his 90th year, time features heavily in this collection. Memory, the past’s influence on our present, and thoughts of the future abound. It is a collection that explores some of the truths of his, and our, time. What is to become of us? What have we done? How do we know?

Terza Rima

In this great from, as Dante proved in Hell,
There is no dreadful thing that can’t be said
In passing. Here, for instance, one could tell

How our jeep skidded sideways toward the dead
Enemy soldier with the staring eyes,
Bumping a little as it struck his head,

And then flew on as if toward paradise.

Anterooms is an apt examination of aspects of the human condition. What is described in “Terza Rima” is horrible. It is the desecration of the dead. Yet is mentioned “in passing.” Three lines that speak of the horror of war, couched in a poem named after its rhyme scheme. This is the skill of Richard Wilbur, the patient, painstaking development of a traditional structure that, almost un-noticed, tells of non-traditional, sometimes shocking, subjects. Like running over a dead man in a jeep . . .

The joy of Anterooms is that we can all see aspects of ourselves in Wilbur’s images. Not all of the images are particularly flattering. Yet they are reflections of our true selves. As he approaches the end of his long and distinguished life, Richard Wilbur gives us the benefit of his years of experience and observation. The works contained in Anterooms may, at first glance, appear simple. However, they are the work of a true craftsman, a man who can meticulously create the right vehicle for expressing what is in us all.

We all are moving toward the end of ourselves. Richard Wilbur is able to express some of what needs to be said as time marches on. Anterooms is not a morbid book about death It is not a maudlin lament on the passing of time. It is a celebration of a life and a time that has seen vast change. It is an affirmation of what it is to be human and to be of the world. Above all, it is Richard Wilbur’s comment on us all based on himself and his own life. It is a reckoning, of sorts.

A Reckoning

At my age, one begins
To chalk up all his sins,
Hoping to wipe the slate
Before it is too late.

Therefore I call to mind
All memories of the kind
That make me writhe and sweat
And tremble with regret.

What do these prove to be?
In every one I see
Shocked faces that, alas,
Now know me for an ass.

Fatuities that I
Have uttered, drunk or dry,
Return now in a rush
And make my old cheek blush.

But how can I repent
From mere embarrassment?
Damn-foolishness can’t well
Entitle me to Hell.

Well, I shall put the blame
On the pride that’s in my shame.
Of that, I must be shriven
If I’m to be forgiven.