Richard Wilbur

If you love poetry, one great place to read critical discussions of it is at Critical Poetry Review Magazine. There's a nice, general essay about modern poetry here and a great one about different styles of modern poetry [and why people like or dislike them] by the excellent poet Joan Houlihan here.

Also, I want to make sure to highlight the great Ted Hughes-like [he was a poet laureate of England and Sylvia Plath's husband] work of Richard Wilbur, a poem called “Hamlen Brook” [scroll down to read it]. Here's an excerpt:


[...]
        And a white precipice
      Of mirrored birch-trees plunges down
Toward where the azures of the zenith drown.
      How shall I drink all this?

            Joy's trick is to supply
      Dry lips with what can cool and slake,
Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache
      Nothing can satisfy.