Richard Wilbur Quotes

48 Sourced Quotes

What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.

Richard Wilbur
Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia.

Richard Wilbur
All that we do
Is touched with ocean, yet we remain On the shore of what we know.

Richard Wilbur
Writing poetry, then, is an unsocial way of manufacturing a thoroughly social product. Because he must shield his poetry in its creation, the poet, more than other writers, will write without recognition. And because his product is not in great demand, he is likely to look on honors and distinctions with the feigned indifference of the wallflower. Yet of course he is pleased when recognition comes; for what better proof is there that for some people poetry is still a useful and necessary thing — like a shoe.

Richard Wilbur
All bitter things conduce to sweet,
As this example shows;
Without the little spirochete We'd have no chocolate to eat,
Nor would tobacco's fragrance greet The European nose.

Richard Wilbur
We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, 'You are not true.'

Richard Wilbur
Whatever pains disease may bring Are but the tangy seasoning To Loves delicious fare.

Richard Wilbur
It is not tricks of sense But the time's fright within me which distracts Least fancies into violence

Richard Wilbur
Columbus and his men, they say, Conveyed the virus hither Whereby my features rot away And vital powers wither; Yet had they not traversed the seas And come infected back, Why, think of all the luxuries That modern life would lack.

Richard Wilbur
The good grey guardians of art
Patrol the halls on spongy shoes.

Richard Wilbur
Try to remember this: what you project
Is what you will perceive; what you perceive
With any passion, be it love or terror,
May take on whims and powers of its own.
Therefore a numb and grudging circumspection
Will serve you best — unless you overdo it,
Watching your step too narrowly, refusing
To specify a world, shrinking your purview
To a tight vision of your inching shoes,
Which may, as soon as you come to think, be crossing
An unseen gorge upon a rotten trestle.

Richard Wilbur
O connoisseurs of thirst,
Beasts of my soul who long to learn to drink
Of pure mirage, those prosperous islands are accurst
That shimmer on the brink
Of absence; auras, lustres,
And all shinings need to be shaped and borne.

Richard Wilbur
The tall camels of the spirit
Steer for their deserts, passing the last groves loud
With the sawmill shrill of the locust, to the whole honey of the
arid
Sun. They are slow, proud,
And move with a stilted stride
To the land of sheer horizon...

Richard Wilbur
In each art the difficulty of the form is a substitution for the difficulty of direct apprehension and expression of the object. The first difficulty may be more or less overcome, but the second is insuperable; thus every poem begins, or ought to, by a disorderly retreat to defensible positions. Or, rather, by a perception of the hopelessness of direct combat, and a resort to the warfare of spells, effigies, and prophecies. The relation between the artist and reality is an oblique one, and indeed there is no good art which is not consciously oblique. If you respect the reality of the world, you know that you can approach that reality only by indirect means.

Richard Wilbur
What is our praise or pride but to imagine excellence and try to make it? What does it say over the door of heaven; but, homo (sapiens) fecit?

Richard Wilbur
The werewolf's painful change. Turning his head away On the sweaty bolster, he tries to remember The mood of manhood, But lies at last, as always, Letting it happen, the fierce fur soft to his face, Hearing with sharper ears.

Richard Wilbur
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Richard Wilbur
I started in to cry and call his name,
Asking forgiveness of his tongueless head.
... I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:
But whether this was false or honest dreaming
I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.

Richard Wilbur
Founded on rock and facing the night-fouled sea
A beacon blinks at its own brilliance,
Over and over with cutlass gaze
Solving the Gordian waters...

Richard Wilbur
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken
In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.

Richard Wilbur
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it.

Richard Wilbur
Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole
And casting out my self, become a soul.

Richard Wilbur
My dog lay dead five days without a grave
In the thick of summer, hid in a clump of pine
And a jungle of grass and honey-suckle vine.
I who had loved him while he kept alive
Went only close enough to where he was
To sniff the heavy honeysuckle-smell
Twined with another odor heavier still
And hear the flies' intolerable buzz.

Richard Wilbur
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,
"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."

Richard Wilbur
Last night I saw the grass
Slowly divide (it was the same scene
But now it glowed a fierce and mortal green)
And saw the dog emerging.

Richard Wilbur