Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's PowerTree podcast. I'm putting on my headphones that

was that creaking sound. Richard Wilber, Richard Wilber, Richard Wilber. It's a name you may

not know, but I discovered Richard Wilber's power treat some years ago and when I started

doing a poetry podcast I wrote a list of people I wanted to do and Richard Wilber was right up

there and I've just never got around to it and I think because I don't feel I finished understanding

yet. Now that is true of every good and very good poet in that the accent is where the joy

is, the climb and I never reach a point where I'm putting the flag in the top. I think I could do

another series of Frank Skinner's PowerTree podcast with all the same poems and it could be called

Frank Skinner's PowerTree podcast open parentheses furthermore close parentheses and it could always

be given me saying oh and furthermore and then other things that I've thought about that poem

since I talked about it before so that's what great poems do they grow on you but Richard Wilber

I think we will see I hope you'll enjoy the growping not a sentence I often use. Richard Wilber was

born in 1921 and died in 2017 I got into the habit of giving you dates just so you get a sense of

who you're listening to and he was a poet laureate of the USA from 87 to 88 the

a normal set term for an American poet laureate is two years it's not like in the UK where you can

go on and on so I'm going to start with a poem from 1947 by Richard Wilber and it's called

a dubious night already I think he's got me what a great title for a poem a dubious night

and we'll come back to the title because often titles don't really make any sense until you've read

the poem but anyway here we go I'm going to give you the first two stanzas and I'm going to tell

you what front though I don't wish to frighten you that this is in Terza Rima Tia Zidai R-I-M-A

and that means that each stanza each little lump of poetry has three lines the first and third

line rhyme but the middle line rhymes with the first and third line in the next stanza I know

...