Richard Wilbur (born in 1921) has been for decades a Grand Old Man of American poetry, and he’s spent most of his career being alternately praised and condemned for the same three things. First, he’s widely agreed to be a formal virtuoso. One might think this would be an indisputable virtue, but in certain quarters, working in meter can still earn you skeptical looks. Second, Wilbur is, depending on your preference, courtly or cautious, civilized or old-fashioned, reasonable or kind of dull — the kind of writer who’s willing to use the word “sir” in direct address without any irony. (As in a poem about Lyndon Johnson: “Wait, Sir, and see how time will render you . . .” Indeed, sirrah, eftsoons shall you know!) Finally, Wilbur is sometimes put forward as a model of resistance to certain tendencies in American poetry, most notably the conspicuous self-­dramatization associated with Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, and the even more conspicuous self-­dramatization associated with Allen Ginsberg. Whether this is entirely true of Wilbur is a complicated question, but it’s fair to say that his writing can make even Donald Justice’s work seem gushy.