SOURCE: "Forty Years of Richard Wilbur: The Loving Work of an Equilibrist," in Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 66, No. 3, Summer 1990, pp. 412-25.

In the following essay, Harris surveys major themes in Wilbur's poetry and explains how his work in New and Collected Poems forms a cohesive whole.

The publication of Richard Wilbur's New and Collected Poems brings under one cover his six previous books, plus 27 new poems and translations. Reading through four decades of work, comprising almost 250 poems, invitingly arranged in reverse chronological order, ringingly emphasizes the justice of his reputation as the master of his craft. His poetry celebrates the power of metaphorical language to divine the human implications of natural patternment, and it affirms the capacity of strict metrics to contain both the dictates of civility and the promptings of joy.

While Wilbur has extended his range of topic, theme, and metrical form, and while he has...