A satisfying rightness …

… Let Us Watch Richard Wilbur: A Biographical Study by Robert Bagg and Mary Bagg | Quarterly Conversation. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Part of the problem for any biographers of a poet like Wilbur is the essential goodness and conventionality of their subject’s life. In the Army, he was neither hero nor coward. He did his job. He is a Christian. He was married to the same woman, Charlee, for sixty-five years, until her death in 2007, and had four apparently normal children. There is no evidence of marital infidelity, spousal abuse, or other scandal. The Baggs tells us the couple rather naively misused prescription drugs with alcohol in the 1980s, and successfully underwent treatment. That’s about the most shocking thing they have to report. Compare that to the lives of Berryman and Crane.