SOURCE: Hougen, John B. “Seeking the Invisible Through the Visible: Celebrative, Metaphysical Poetry.” In Ecstasy Within Discipline: The Poetry of Richard Wilbur, pp. 97-121. Atlanta Georgia, United States: Scholars Press, 1995.

In this essay from a book-length project on religious themes in Wilbur, the author contends that Wilbur is a metaphysical poet

Now there is, I conceive, one duality that underlies a great deal of poetry, especially the kind of poetry that is called (aptly, I think) ‘metaphysical’: it is, in largest terms, the duality of the One and the Many. Metaphysical poetry is a poetry of the dilemma, and the dilemma which paradoxes and antitheses continually seek to display is the famous one at which all philosophies falter, the relation of the One with the Many, the leap by which infinity becomes finite, essence becomes existence; the commingling of the spirit with matter, the working of God in...