理查德·威尔伯:二十世纪下半叶美国最伟大的诗人

Richard Wilbur: Greatest American Poet of the Last Half-Century

理查德·威尔伯(Richard Wilbur)如今已奔至九十高龄,他曾在1957年和1989年两次获得普利策奖,并于1987年被誉为'美国桂冠诗人'。大卫·奥尔(David Orr)最近在《纽约时报》的星期天书评专栏中将威尔伯称之为'美国诗歌界中的元老'(1),很难想象还有谁适合这个称号。威尔伯出生于1921年3月1日,这一天也是圣大卫日(St.David’s Da y)。他在硕果累累的一生中,看到了美国辉煌的上升期、繁荣期及不景气时代,或许他也将看到美帝国政权的衰落。然而,尽管威尔伯本人有着'美国桂冠诗人'的称号,他完全不是个宫廷诗人。虽然二战期间,他曾因被怀疑不忠诚而被情报部门开除,但除了年轻时有些左派的观点,总体而言,他实在很难被归类为御用文人。但不可否认的是。

Richard Wilbur is widely acknowledged as the finest craftsman among American poets writing since mid-twentieth century.What sets him further apart is his unusually positive and affirmative attitude toward life,graciousness and unselfishness without a trace of the bitterness,cynicism or the nihilism such as has characterized the work of many other American poets who were his contemporaries.He is strikingly a-political,refusing to engage in the partisan quarrels which,during the last decades especially,have grown in intensity and so fractured the literary community in America.As a Christian poet in the tradition of George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins,Wilbur celebrates creation and encourages spiritual re-creation in his poetry.This paper analyzes these unique features of Wilbur’s poems by reading some of his works closely,starting from Wilbur’s latest volume Anterooms and tracing back to his other volume in 2004.The author argues that Richard Wilbur has been a prophet and more than a prophet.As a senior poet,his voice represents the America’s younger self,a self still open to the beauty of a world renewed and ever-new.