Ecstasy Within Discipline: The Poetry of Richard Wilbur

Ecstasy Within Discipline is a study of the theological and spiritual dimensions of Richard Wilbur’s poetry. First, it places Wilbur in the context of a generation of American writers who were searching for poetic ways to acknowledge the power of life’s non-rational dimensions including the spiritual. Then it traces the several strategies found repeatedly in Wilbur’s poems by which the poet leads his readers toward significant theological insights and spiritual encounters. Finally, Wilbur’s understanding of the relationship of spirit and the material world is compared with that of Emerson, Dickinson, Frost, Merton, and the Christian scriptures. Richard Wilbur proves to be a writer whose immense skill at his craft is matched by the profundity of his exploration of the human spirit and the transcendence for which it hungers. This is the first book-length study of Wilbur’s poetry to focus on its theological and spiritual import.