Anterooms, Richard Wilbur 2010

Wilbur has won nearly every prize in American poetry but this slim volume (his 32nd!) is a bit flat, perhaps due to its composite nature.  With 17 new poems, 4 translations (Mellare, Verlaine, Horace, and Brodsky), and a final translation of 37 riddles from the 4thC C.E. Roman, Symphosius, the volume does not cohere.  This doesn’t negate the wordplay and imagery of several excellent poems.