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Richard Wilbur. Mayflies: New Poems and Translations. New York. Harcourt Brace. 2000. 80 pages. $22. IsBN 0-15-- 100469-2.
RICHARD WILBUR REMAINS the poet of civilized values that he has been since his first book, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems, was published in 1947. He has resisted the descent into public violence and private anguish found in some of his contemporaries' work, and yet he has lived through a few of the worst episodes of modern history. We know, for example, that he survived the Italian campaign in World War II when he served in the army; Monte Cassino and Anzio would provide a large ready-- made subject for poets as well as novelists. It may be that writing poems under those circumstances was a way of contending with violence, an idea...