Richard Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14 2017) was U.S. Poet Laureate from 1987 – 1988 and won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry twice, in 1957 and 1989. Other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the Frost Medal, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and a National Medal of Arts. Wilbur is the author of eleven books of poems, including Things of This World (1956), and New and Collected Poems (1988), two collections of prose, and several children’s books. He also translated Molière, Jean Racine, and Pierre Corneille from French to English. Wilbur taught at Wellesley College, Wesleyan University and Smith College.
