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Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) is part of a notable literary cohort, American poets who came to prominence in the mid-twentieth century. Wilbur's verse is esteemed for its fluency, wit, and optimism; his ingeniously rhymed translations of French drama by Molière, Racine, and Corneille remain the most often staged in the English-speaking world; his essays possess a scope and acumen equal to the era's best criticism. This biography examines the philosophical and visionary depth of his world-renowned poetry and traces achievements spanning seventy years, from political editorials about World War II to war poems written during his service to his theatrical career, including a contentious collaboration with Leonard Bernstein and Lillian Hellman.

Wilbur's life has been mistakenly seen as blessed, lacking the drama of his troubled contemporaries. Let Us Watch Richard Wilbur corrects that view and explores how Wilbur's perceived “normality” both enhanced and limited his achievement. The authors augment the life story with details gleaned from access to his unpublished journals, family archives, candid interviews they conducted with Wilbur and his wife, Charlee, and his correspondence with Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, John Malcolm Brinnin, James Merrill, and others.

Letters of a Poet Dying is a watershed publication—the first collection of correspondence by the virtuosic poet Frank Stanford (1948–78). Born in southeast Mississippi, Stanford lived most of his brief life in northern Arkansas, where he studied, loved, founded a publishing company, and wrote prolifically before ending his life at the age of twenty-nine. These strikingly original letters, postcards, and book inscriptions written in Stanford’s twenties to several dozen recipients—poets, editors, friends, lovers, and family members—illuminate his complicated and often tumultuous creative process.

Enhanced by A. P. Walton’s painstaking scholarship, Stanford’s correspondence reveals a poet intent on crafting and shaping his oeuvre as he approached the death he long anticipated. “I have never feared Death,” he wrote in 1972. For him, “Death was always there, a pale master holding the reins of my horse.” Yet these letters are much more than a contemplation of the poet’s own mortality—they demonstrate a lust for life and contain untold moments of beauty, providing intimate, moving glimpses into Stanford’s creativity, aesthetic beliefs, friendships, romances, and fears.

That these letters have survived obscurity for the many decades since the poet’s death is a small miracle. Stanford’s letters offer a clear window into the genius of one of the most gifted and prodigious poets of the twentieth century and stand in their own right as significant works of literature.