SOURCE: "Wilbur's 'Advice to a Prophet'," in The Explicator, Vol. 51, No. 1, Fall 1992, pp. 55-59.

In the following essay, Frontain cites classical and biblical sources and influences of Wilbur's "Advice to a Prophet."

In "Advice to a Prophet," the title poem in Richard Wilbur's 1961 collection, the poet addresses one of the most important social and political problems of the atomic/nuclear age—the danger of mankind's destroying itself and its planet. It also answers one of the most difficult questions addressed by the poets of his generation—namely, how to reach an alienated, uninterested, even apathetic audience grown deaf to the poet/prophet's voice of admonition and entreaty. The speaker's advice is that the anonymous prophet not emphasize the destruction that will result if the community continues on its present course; people have grown so incapable of imagining a world without them that the prophet's traditional scare tactics cannot...