From the Editor

We are dedicating this issue to Richard Wilbur who, when given the opportunity to write an introduction to any poet's work for the Laurel Poetry Series, chose Poe. Here is what Wilbur had to say about this choice when I interviewed him fifteen years ago:

There were various other poets I could have chosen to edit, but I did feel that, in the case of Poe, I had had a kind of personal experience of him, and I felt—it's hard to put this without seeming to brag—but I felt that I had had a special experience of him and seen into him to a degree that the critics I had encountered had not done. I'm really not in favor of the kind of critical pride that makes one claim to be the elected interpreter of somebody—but the way Poe's suggested themes initially came at me in a foxhole at Cassino rather committed me to him, and the more I looked into Poe, the more I read and re-read him, the more I felt that I had not been hallucinating in my initial understandings.

Below are the responses from PSA members who had known Wilbur or loved his work; they stand as a true testament to Wilbur and his regard for Poe.

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Richard Wilbur's POE in the Laurel Poetry Series is a small book, but it was the greatest to me. I am sorry I cannot write more than a short personal note, since I have been away from Poe for many years. I just took out Wilbur's POE and remembered how his "symbolic destruction of the physical" gave me a poetical flush. When I re-read his introduction to Poe, I feel like I'm going back to my youth. Ichigoro Uchida, born 1936.

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I had the good fortune to take Richard Wilbur's course on Poe in the fall of 1963 at Wesleyan University. He was a wonderful teacher. He dealt with the materials very concretely, placing each meticulously in the framework of the "hypnogogic state" between waking and dreaming, which seemed to be the space where many of Poe's central figures found their creative locale. For our term papers in that course, he provided us with a dittoed list of seventy-five to one hundred names of people who might be put in some relation to Poe. I happened to choose Benjamin Rush from the list and ended up reading Dr. Rush's Medical Inquiries and Observations, which, in turn, led to Rush's essay on the extraction of teeth to cure seemingly unrelated maladies. Since the connection to "Berenice" was very direct, the "singular" subject could be interpreted in relation to the essay as an example of science trying and failing to overcome spiritual maladies. It made for a good term paper and a chunk of my master's thesis on medicine in Poe's short stories (now on the Baltimore Poe Society website should anyone be interested).

Richard Wilbur was a very kind man, and he presented his work in a way that encouraged thoughtful consideration and growth. He also wrote a letter that probably got me into Duke's graduate school, so I think of him fondly as both advancing my knowledge and my career as a scholar. David E. E. Sloane

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I got to know about Richard Wilbur, first, by reading some of his poems in my poetry seminar at Ursinus College in the spring of 1962. When I went to Duke that fall, I picked up Wilbur's The Beautiful Changes (1955), dust jacket and all, in a Durham bookstore. Then I came to know Wilbur's critiques of Poe. Years later, when I was president of PSA, he was awarded honorary membership during an MLA convention in New York. Mrs. Maureen Mabbott arranged a luncheon, at the Dorchester, so Wilbur could meet PSA officers. An enjoyable time was had by all present, for there was no pretense, only cordial interaction between Wilbur and the rest of the group. Wilbur had also been invited by MLA to give a talk to...