Long love and constant spirits: an interview with Richard and Charlee Wilbur - Interview

Literary Review, Summer, 2002 by Jeffrey S. Cramer

Throughout their long association with poets, the Wilburs have observed both the good and bad sides of being married to a poet, including when poet marries poet.

CW: William Jay Smith and Barbara Howes: they were good friends, and their situation was, when we met, joyously unique to us. They were each writing poems. They were reading their poems aloud to each other and supporting one another.

RW: When we first knew them, and for a number of years thereafter, they were a remarkable couple in their strong support of each other's work. It is rather a rare thing to see two people bring that off.

CW: I can think of another couple whose lives were intertwined in middle age and continued on from there. Both of them in that marriage write poetry to this day: Stanley Kunitz and Elise Asher. She, however, is primarily a painter. The remarkable thing about them is that he has always been interested in painting and she has always painted and written poetry. Each pursues his or her career but overlap with genuine interest and concern. It is a splendid marriage, wouldn't you say?

RW: Yes, yes, that is precisely right, and I've just thought of one other case of two writers living successfully and happily in the same house: that's Robert Penn Warren and Eleanor Clark. There was a lot of generosity and gallantry in that marriage and they were two very industrious writers. I don't think anybody lost out there. Of course there are other stories and sadder ones.

Of those others stories--stories of sadness, despair and tragedy--they will not speak. These are places the Wilburs will not go and they keep a respectful distance for the sake of others, whether living or dead. Robert Frost, for instance, had said after his wife Elinor had passed away, that most artists should never marry or at least should not have a family, but even here they veer protectively from the specific to the general.

CW: We knew Frost well. I think it is an erroneous statement to generalize that it would be unwise for poets to marry. I think that it is essential that they marry. They need the care, the warmth, the containment and, of course, the companionship, because they are loners.

One night, around 1960, after her husband had gone to bed, Charlee sat up all night talking with Frost, who was staying with the Wilburs in Portland, Connecticut. During their conversations, Frost told her "to take good care of Dick and not let him go crazy."

CW: I understood what he was talking about. Most poets I've ever known have had tendencies to madness. I was in the business of taking care of Dick and our children, so it seemed like an expected thing for him to say to me out of his own fear of madness. He cared very much for us and he wanted Dick to continue to write and for nothing bad to happen to him. That's what he was saying to me.

RW: He was wary about his own emotional make-up, wasn't he? He was always aware of coping with a set of feelings which could veer toward deep depression and that made him alert to the possibility of derangement in others. At one time he was dismissive of Emily Dickinson because he felt that there was too much craziness in her poetry and I remember his criticizing some people of my generation for letting themselves go in that respect, for sort of indulging their inclinations to madness.