With a distinguished career spanning more than sixty years, Richard Wilbur stands as one of America's preeminent men of letters. Collected Poems 1943-2004 is the comprehensive collection of Wilbur's astonishing, timeless work. It will serve as the most referenced trove of this beloved poet's best verses for many years to come.
In Trackless Woods
In trackless woods, it puzzled me to find
Four great rock maples seemingly aligned,
As if they had been set out in a row
Before some house a century ago,
To edge the property and lend some shade.
I looked to see if ancient wheels had made
Old ruts to which the trees ran parallel,
But there were none, so far as I could tell-
There'd been no roadway. Nor could I find the square
Depression of a cellar anywhere,
And so I tramped on further, to survey
Amazing patterns in a hornbeam spray
Or spirals in a pine cone, under trees
Not subject to our stiff geometries.

The renowned French playwright Moliere's most masterful and most frequently performed play, skillfully translated into English by the Pulitzer Prize-winning translator Richard Wilbur. The rich bourgeois Orgon has become a bigot and prude. The title character, a wily opportunist and swindler, affects sancity and gains complete ascendancy over Ogron, who not only attemps to turn over his fortune but offers his daughter in marriage to his "spiritual" guide. Translated and with an Introduction by Richard Wilbur.

With a distinguished career spanning more than sixty years, Richard Wilbur stands as one of America's preeminent men of letters. Collected Poems 1943-2004 is the comprehensive collection of Wilbur's astonishing, timeless work. It will serve as the most referenced trove of this beloved poet's best verses for many years to come.
In Trackless Woods
In trackless woods, it puzzled me to find
Four great rock maples seemingly aligned,
As if they had been set out in a row
Before some house a century ago,
To edge the property and lend some shade.
I looked to see if ancient wheels had made
Old ruts to which the trees ran parallel,
But there were none, so far as I could tell-
There'd been no roadway. Nor could I find the square
Depression of a cellar anywhere,
And so I tramped on further, to survey
Amazing patterns in a hornbeam spray
Or spirals in a pine cone, under trees
Not subject to our stiff geometries.

Additional Contributors Are John Latouche And Dorothy Parker.

Additional Contributors Are John Latouche And Dorothy Parker.

This volume represents virtually all of Wilbur's published poetry to date, including his six earlier collections, twenty-seven new poems, and a cantata. Winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry.

In this classic text, the distinguished poet and critic John Hollander surveys the schemes, patterns, and forms of English verse, illustrating each variation with an original and witty self-descriptive example. In new essays for this revised edition, J. D. McClatchy and Richard Wilbur each offer a personal take on why Rhymes's Reason has played an integral role in the education of young poets and student scholars. "[Hollander] put everything he knew about the structures of poetry-those fabled magic tricks-into a sort of guidebook for those starting out on the trail up Mount Parnassus. . . . There are astonishments on every page."-from the Foreword by J. D. McClatchy "This book's wit and inventive spirit, its self-describing embodiments of form, now offer the beginning poet a happy chance to discover the technician in himself."-from the Afterword by Richard Wilbur "How lucky the young poet who discovers this wisest and most lighthearted of manuals."-James Merrill "What the E. B. White-William Strunk The Elements of Style is to the writing of prose, Rhyme's Reason could very easily become to the writing of verse. . . . Marvelously comprehensive, clarifying and useful, [and] a delight to read."-John Reardon, Los Angeles Times Review of Books "A virtuoso performance and a mandatory text for poetry readers and practitioners alike."-ALA Booklist

Richard Wilbur's translations of the great French dramas have been a boon to acting troupes, students of French literature and history, and theater lovers. He continues this wonderful work with two plays from Pierre Corneille: Le Cid is Corneille's most famous play, a tragedy set in Seville that illuminates the dangers of being bound by honor and the limits of romantic love; The Liar is a farce, set in France and dealing with love, misperceptions, and downright falsifications, which ends, of course, happily ever after.
These two plays, together in one volume, work in perfect tandem to showcase the breadth of Corneille's abilities. Taking us back to the time he portrays as well as the time of his greatest success as a playwright, they remind us of that the delights to be found on the French stage are truly ageless.

Pierre Corneille, in his original dedication for The Theatre of Illusion, described the play as a "strange monster." He first called these five acts a comedy; later, a "caprice" and an "extravagant trifle." Written in 1635 and staged in 1636, the play vanished from the stage for the next three hundred years--to be revived in 1937 by Louis Jouvet and the Comedie Francaise. Since then it has been widely considered, in Virginia Scott's words, "Corneille's baroque masterpiece."

Today this brilliant piece of wit and drama is available in a new translation from one of America's finest poets and translators of French, Richard Wilbur. Widely praised for his translations of plays by Moliere and Racine, Wilbur now turns his poetic grace to this work, which remains as much a celebration of the comedy of humanity and the magic of life as it was when Corneille wrote it.

Don Juan, the "Seducer of Seville," originated as a hero-villain of Spanish folk legend, is a famous lover and scoundrel who has made more than a thousand sexual conquests. One of Moliere's best-known plays, Don Juan was written while Tartuffe was still banned on the stages of Paris, and shared much with the outlawed play. Modern directors transform Don Juan in every new era, as each director finds something new to highlight in this timeless classic. Richard Wilbur's flawless translation will be the standard for generations to come, as have his translations of Moliere's other plays. Witty, urbane, and poetic in its prose, Don Juan is, most importantly, as funny now as it was for audiences when it was first presented.

"I came to see that a line that simply says 'I love you, ' at the right point in the show, is entirely adequate, that a great deal of verbal sophistication is not necessarily called for. . . . Speak-ability is so important. That's something I slowly had to learn about poetry, and something I had to work on always with Moliere."--Richard Wilbur

Lovers' Quarrels is Moliere's second full-length verse play, animated with deception and tangles of love.

Richard Wilbur is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a former Poet Laureate of the United States. His verse translations of Moliere's plays have been performed for audiences throughout the world.

Collections of interviews with notable modern writers

For many years some of the finest craftsmen throughout North America laboured in factories large and small to produce carriages and sleighs. This book celebrates their skills and artistry.
This full-colour book presents the full range of vehicles they produced: carts, carriages, sleighs, buggies and slovens -- from the very grand opera bus to the functional ox wagon. The text looks at design developments, the variety of usage and technological details.
This book draws on one of the finest collections of horse-drawn vehicles in North America, at New Brunswick's Kings Landing Settlement near Fredericton, with photographs were taken on site with animators in period costume and horses harnessed. It shows how the carriage-making industry in New Brunswick developed over time, relative to the development of roads.