James Wright
James Arlington Wright (1927-1980) is recognized as a pivotal voice in American poetry, notably for his departure from the high modernism exemplified by poets like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, his work often reflects the contrasts of his industrial upbringing during the Great Depression, incorporating the beauty and harshness of the Ohio Valley into his imagery. After serving in the Army and attending Kenyon College, where he began achieving literary milestones, Wright's first poetry collection, *The Green Wall*, was published in 1957 and showcased a blend of modernist and formal poetic styles.
His collaboration with contemporary poets, including Robert Bly, influenced a significant evolution in his writing, leading to the acclaimed *The Branch Will Not Break*, which marked a departure from traditional objectivity towards a more personal and image-driven approach. Wright's career was punctuated by both professional accomplishments, like winning the Pulitzer Prize for his *Collected Poems*, and personal challenges, including the loss of loved ones and his struggle with illness. Despite these hardships, he produced deeply resonant works until his passing from cancer in 1980, leaving a legacy that continues to influence contemporary poetry.
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James Wright
American poet
- Born: December 13, 1927
- Birthplace: Martins Ferry, Ohio
- Died: March 25, 1980
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
James Arlington Wright is one of the most significant poetic voices reacting to what has been called the “high modernist” American poetry of the early twentieth century, represented by T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and others. His early break from this type of highly formal poetry was associated with the “deep image” school of Robert Bly but soon outgrew such categories. Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, an industrial town on the upper Ohio River, in 1927, fourteen months before the stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The insecurities of an industrial town during the Depression haunt his poetry, and the Ohio Valley, with its paradoxical conflux of natural beauty and industrial ugliness, remained prominent in his imagery, even in his poetry written in Europe.
Despite this emphasis on his Ohio home in his writing, Wright’s early years were marked by his keen desire to get away from it. Upon graduation in 1946, he enlisted in the Army and served a tour in Japan. After completing military service, Wright entered Kenyon College in 1948. His senior year, 1952, was filled with milestones: He married his high school sweetheart, Liberty Kardules; had his first poem published in the Western Review; won the Robert Frost Poetry Prize; and received a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Vienna. His first son, Franz, was born in Vienna.
Returning to the United States, Wright began graduate study in English literature at the University of Washington in the fall of 1953. In 1957, his first book of poetry, The Green Wall, was published in the Yale Younger Poets series, a prestigious venue for which the competition is sharp. Further distinction was given the volume via its foreword by the eminent modernist poet W. H. Auden. The verse of The Green Wall is very much like that of the modernist poetry of the first half of the twentieth century: rhythmically freer than earlier verse forms, yet retaining the measured cadence of blank verse. Many sections of “Sappho,” one of the best poems in the book, can be scanned as iambic pentameter. “A Gesture by a Lady with an Assumed Name” is in iambic pentameter quatrains of alternating rhyme—the type of formal structure most of his contemporaries were rejecting.
In 1957 Wright began teaching at the University of Minnesota, where he began his association with Robert Bly a year later. His next collection of poems, Saint Judas, little reflects the association, but the one after that, The Branch Will Not Break, represents a significant shift in style. In fact, it has been widely recognized as a watershed work for modern American poetry in general. With Bly, Wright had been studying the surrealistic, highly subjective poetry of the Peruvian César Vallejo and the Chilean Pablo Neruda. Wright’s translations of these two poets’ works, in collaboration with Bly, infused his own poetry with what South American critics had called Vallejo’s “personalist” style, consciously rejecting the studied objectivity of high modernism, though maintaining the modernist tendency to develop a poem by images.
Wright spent much of the next five years on the move. His first marriage had ended in divorce in 1962. In 1964 he taught at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. The following year he won a Guggenheim Fellowship which allowed him to travel to California, back to his home state of Ohio, and to New York, where he began teaching at Hunter College in 1966. In 1967 he married Edith Anne Runk in New York.
Wright’s next collection of poems, Shall We Gather at the River, offered more of the newer style of poetry seen in his previous book and contained what would become some of his most anthologized poems. He confirmed his own importance as a major American poet by gathering all of his previous poems, as well as thirty-three new ones, in Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.
The 1970’s were marked by travel in Europe (in 1972 and, with a second Guggenheim, in 1978) and by increased recognition for his work. During this time he also experienced significant personal loss, the death of his father in 1973 and that of his mother in 1974, which precipitated a nervous collapse. In his poetry volumes Two Citizens, Moments of the Italian Summer, and To a Blossoming Pear Tree, he continued developing his deep symbolist mode. Unable to shake a sore throat that he first noticed at the end of his last trip to Europe in the autumn of 1979, Wright was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue in December. He died the following March, having already completed his last volume of poems, This Journey.
Bibliography
Dougherty, David. James Wright. Boston: Twayne, 1987. This essential book provides the reader with a historical study of Wright’s development as a craftsman, thereby allowing the individual to judge the poet’s historical importance. In addition, the book suggests—and examines—the intended unity in each of Wright’s books and provides readers with insightful readings of key Wright texts.
Dougherty, David. The Poetry of James Wright. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991. Critical interpretation of selected works by Wright. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Roberson, William. James Wright: An Annotated Bibliography. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1995. Good resource for locating articles and other publications by and about Wright.
Smith, Dave. The Pure Clear Word: Essays on the Poetry of James Wright. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982. Attempts to determine the degree to which Wright confessed the truth and to which he fabricated reality in his work. The essays include W. H. Auden’s foreword to “The Green War,” Robert Bly’s “The Work of James Wright,” and others that cover a variety of topics from Wright’s personal life to his poetry. Contains a bibliography.
Stein, Kevin. James Wright: The Poetry of a Grown Man. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989. An academic study that traces the growth of the entire body of Wright’s work. The poems are examined to show that his stylistic changes are frequently more apparent than actual, that he experienced an ongoing personal and artistic evolution, and that the transition of his themes from despair to hope is the result of his gradual acceptance of the natural world.