Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur never gets the credit he deserves. He was a true humanist, which made him both a universal thinker—a citizen of the great cosmopolitan Republic of Letters—and also an unapologetic product of his particular part of history and portion of earth.

Such individuals, from the bard of Gilgamesh to the present moment, are the flowering of humanity that citification made possible through its division of labor. They are the true heroes of human history, and I can only hope that there will be some evidence that they lived among us after the American suicide cult that passes for Evangelical Christianity in the 21st century and has infiltrated the highest echelons of our government has brought about the Armageddon it so longs for.

Maybe an alien race, investigating the smoldering ruins, will find some tattered remnant of Wilbur’s essay on poetry and happiness and take it back to their planet to decipher. Of course, reading it will only deepen the mystery of the fate of our species. But at least they will have obtained some intimation of what, in our better moments, we were capable of producing.