Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) A Museum Piece, A Late Aubade LINKS No links found. BIOGRAPHY Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) Son of a portrait artist, Wilbur was born in New York City, graduated from Amherst College in 1942, became staff sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War II, then earned an M.A. from Harvard in 1947. He taught English at Harvard, Wellesley, and Wesleyan University, and was named writer-in-residence at Smith College in 1977. Former Poet Laureate of the United States and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and the Bollingen Translation Prize, Wilbur has distinguished himself, in his several volumes of poetry, by using established poetic forms and meters, mining new insights from common, tangible images. A translator of French plays by Molière and Racine, Wilbur was colyricist (with Lillian Hellman) of Candide, the 1957 Broadway musical based on Voltaire's satirical novel. New and Collected Poems appeared in 1988, More Opposites in 1991, and most recently, The Catbird's Song: Prose Pieces 1963–1995 in 1997.