With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Richard Wilbur
Education/Curation, Poetry
1921 –
Wilbur taught at Wesleyan University in Middletown for twenty years, where he was a founder of the acclaimed Wesleyan University Press poetry series in 1959.
- Biography/Description of Work
Richard Wilbur served as a cryptographer in World War II before earning a master’s degree from Harvard in 1947. His book of poetry, ‘Things of This World,’ won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize. He won a second Pulitzer in 1989 for ‘New and Collected Poems.’ Other awards and honors include the Bollingen Prize, the Robert Frost Medal and the Shelley Memorial Award. He was also a literary translator. Wilbur left Wesleyan in 1977 to become writer in residence at Smith College. He was appointed the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for 1987-1988.
- Sources view
- [ http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/richard-wilbur ] [ http://www.loc.gov/poetry/laureate-1981-1990.html ] [ http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/wilbur/bio.htm ] Lehman, Eric D. and Amy Nawrocki. 2014 Literary Connecticut. Charleston: The History Press.
- Associated Resource(s)