Something sacramental …

… The “Cassocked Shadow” of Richard Wilbur – Catholic World Report. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Beginning with his New and Collected Poems, published in 1988, Wilbur’s decision on how to reprint the body of his poetry would only strengthen that gleam. The volume placed the new poems at the start, and then reprinted his previous collections in reverse chronological order. To read them thus entailed reading the older poems through, or in light of, the more recent ones, all the way back to the beginning—and this could have an uncanny effect. The newer work displays a decidedly sacramental or Catholic imagination … and the earlier poems suddenly seem to bear anticipations of it within themselves.