The Mind-Reader
by Richard Wilbur
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I never know how to review poetry. I don't know what Wilbur was doing, or why. This is a quick book of poetry that reads nicely with maybe traditional forms. I read several poems in April 2025 and couldn't make anything out of them. So, I set it aside. When I picked it back up this January I quickly found a section of translations of classic poetry from different languages, which I enjoyed. A lot from French. The last poem, The Mind-Reader, is a long one narrated by someone who read minds for a living, and who can actually read minds.
I want to add that at the end I discovered the notes and they were really helpful. I revisited several poems and they helped me understand the surface meaning of the poem, which often turns out to be show more something very simple, things Wilbur witnessed, or facts he stumbled across. I never would have known that without the notes. I should add the poems are doing different things and the surface meaning isn't the whole experience. But it was nice to get that.
2026
https://www.librarything.com/topic/377230#9103199 show less
I want to add that at the end I discovered the notes and they were really helpful. I revisited several poems and they helped me understand the surface meaning of the poem, which often turns out to be show more something very simple, things Wilbur witnessed, or facts he stumbled across. I never would have known that without the notes. I should add the poems are doing different things and the surface meaning isn't the whole experience. But it was nice to get that.
2026
https://www.librarything.com/topic/377230#9103199 show less
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81+ Works 2,955 Members
Richard Purdy Wilbur was born in New York City on March 1, 1921. He received a bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1942. During Word War II, he was a combat soldier in Europe. He received a master's degree from Harvard University in 1947. He taught at Harvard University, Wesleyan University, Smith College, and Amherst College. His first show more collection, The Beautiful Changes, was published in 1947. His other collections of poetry included The Mind-Reader and Anterooms. In 1957, he received the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for Things of This World. He received a second Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for New and Collected Poems. He became the second poet laureate of the United States in 1987-88 and received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2006. He also wrote and illustrated several children's books and wrote lyrics for opera and musical theater productions including Leonard Bernstein's Candide. He was a translator of poems and other works from the French, Spanish, and Russian, including the plays of Molière and Jean Racine. He was the co-recipient of the Bollingen Translation Prize in 1963. He died on October 14, 2017 at the age of 96. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Original title
- The Mind-Reader: New Poems
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- Languages
- English
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- Paper
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