An Undergraduate Interviews Richard Wilbur (April 1959)

In 1959 Richard Wilbur paid a visit to the campus of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, while I was a senior undergraduate at the time. Before his reading, he kindly agreed to sit with me for an interview. It was taped on April 13 and has not been published before now. The interview captures Wilbur when he was at a midpoint in his career and was beginning to receive the recognition that his poetry richly deserved. Just a few years earlier he had won both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award for his volume Things of This World (1956). He had also contributed lyrics to the Leonard Bernstein stage musical Candide, although it had not succeeded on its first time out in 1956. Later revivals would ultimately earn two major drama critics' awards as best musical of 1973–74. It was also in 1959 that the Laurel Poetry Series published Poe: Complete Poems, with an Introduction and Notes by Richard Wilbur.

Fig 1.

Line drawing copyright 1969 by Lewis O. Thompson. Reprinted by permission of L. B. Thompson and A. B. Thompson for the estate of the artist.

thomas inge:

Mr. Wilbur, what is your opinion of the "Beat Generation" and "angry young men" literary movements, in particular their poetry?

richard wilbur:

I think they are two very different phenomena. I should say that the angry young men, who don't make a very coherent group really, are a literary phenomenon. People like John Wain and Kingsley Amis are real writers. The Beat Generation in America, so it seems to me, are not a literary phenomenon at all but a social phenomenon. I would say that they are more interested in life than in writing and that a lot of their behavior is very publicly minded and is done in response to the expectations of the public, who are fearful that we are slipping into a period of conformity and are happy to see any apparent nonconformity and regard that as a sign of fresh energy. Actually, I don't believe there is anything fresh about the behavior of the Beat Generation. Mostly it is very imitative of Bohemian behavior of the 1920s—the main new elements I think are marijuana and homosexuality—but for the rest, it is the old pattern.

ti:

You have been a poet and a translator and have worked on a musical comedy. Which of these jobs have you enjoyed the most?

rw:

Oh, they are all very different. I feel happiest writing poetry because that is what I do best. To work in musical comedy is to have a lot of fun, but one has to bear in mind at all times the audience, and one is limited in what one can do because of that necessity. One is under pressure from backers who want to make money back on their investments. One is under pressure from collaborators. It is a very hampered sort of literary work. As for translation, there is considerable pleasure in that, especially if one is doing it for love. The advantage of translation as against writing original poetry is that you can do a bit of it in any mood. You can translate a few lines a day for as long as you live, whereas poems, alas, come only on inspiration.

ti:

With reference to your work on Candide, was your work fruitful, or was there anything in particular that you got out of the experience?

rw:

I learned a lot about the relationship of words to music, and I suppose that I learned that things which might be applied to the writing of what they call art songs might be applied to the writing of opera libretto. I have learned a little bit about what a singer's voice can do and at what levels it becomes difficult to make sounds like "o" and "e," so there was a certain amount of practical knowledge picked up.

ti:

In view of the short-lived success of Candide, do you have any opinions on...