Richard Wilbur wrote in one of his essays that the Commencement Address was one of the most difficult prose genres because the writer had so much to take into account. I would say the same for a tribute to Richard Wilbur himself.
The poetry of Richard Wilbur has been an integral part of the College (Thomas More) curriculum for decades. On the front page of my old marked copy of his New and Collected Poems is my name and “Roma 1997.” Thomas More College is the only institution of higher education in the United States (as far as I know) that undertakes something of a special study of Wilbur’s poetry for all students. Wilbur knew that fact and would always brush it off in his self-effacing manner, but secretly knowing that we were onto something, recognizing the order, precision, wonder–and insight–embodied in his work.
One year, probably about 2002, I thought the students might be tiring of Wilbur so I dropped his poetry from the Rome book list. As soon as the list was posted, I had a delegation of prospective Rome students come to my office wondering why I had done so. I explained my feeble reasons, and they responded emphatically that they wanted to read, study, and know Wilbur’s poetry in Rome and that it had become something of a College tradition to do so. So that was that.
Wilbur’s time in Rome at the American Academy in the early nineteen-fifties had a profound influence on his poetic sensibility. I have long thought that Wilbur embodied the quintessential American character, but that his muse was Roman. Compounded with these two elements–the American and the Roman–is a third of considerable importance. When Richard Wilbur served in the Second World War with his division, the 36th Texans, mainly in France and Italy, early on in his service a Catholic chaplain gave him a missal which he studied throughout the fighting. You can see the significance of this event in manifold ways in virtually all of his poetry.
Many times over the years students would choose a study of the poetry of Richard Wilbur as their Junior Project. I would always encourage those who undertook such a study to write Wilbur a letter at his home in Cummington, Massachusetts. Those who did so always received a reply that was courteous, witty, and urbane, so much a reflection of his character and poetry in general.
Ever since graduate school, I harbored a secret hope that I would have dinner with Wilbur one day. The opportunity for that in this life is no more, so now I must place my honest hope and well-founded expectation in the next.
Paul Connell ’85
Rome
October 17, 2017
The Beautiful Changes
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.