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American poet and translator. Richard Purdy Wilbur, the son of Lawrence Lazear Wilbur, an artist, and Helen Ruth Purdy Wilbur, was born in New York City but spent many early years in a rural area near North Caldwell, New Jersey. He has asserted that this country experience accounts for his earlier nature poetry. He wrote his first poem, “That’s When the Nightingales Wake,” at the age of eight. After graduating from Montclair High School, he attended Amherst College in Massachusetts where he edited the college newspaper and considered a career in journalism. He graduated in 1942 and that same year married college sweetheart Charlotte Ward, with whom he had four children, Ellen, Christopher, Nathan, and Aaron. They were married for sixty-four years until her death in 2007.