Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur will give a poetry reading Thursday, April 10, at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell.

The reading is free and open to the public.

Wilbur published his first volume of poetry, The Beautiful Changes, in 1947 and has since won high praise for his work. He was twice honored with a Pultizer Prize: in 1957 for Things of This World and in 1989 for New and Collected Poems. His other acclaimed titles include Ceremony, Things of This World, Advice to a Prophet, Walking to Sleep and The Mind Reader.

"Richard Wilbur is certainly one of the leading poets writing in English. He's also the most distinguished translator of French poetry and the leading Edgar Allan Poe critic of our time," said Robert Morgan, Cornell professor of English. "What is remarkable about Richard's work is the formal perfection of the poem and the power of observation, such as when he describes a fountain in Rome in The Baroque Wall Fountain; you not only see it but you also hear the water splashing."

Wilbur also has collaborated with Lillian Hellman and Leonard Bernstein in writing the lyrics for the comic opera Candide. He has published a collection of essays,Responses, and has written the children's books Loudmouse, Opposites and More Opposites.

Educated at Amherst College and Harvard University, Wilbur became the United States' second Poet Laureate in 1987, succeeding Robert Penn Warren. A former president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Wilbur recently was made a chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Academiques in Paris.