James Wright (poet)
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James Arlington Wright (December 13, 1927 – March 25, 1980) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet.
Wright first emerged on the literary scene in 1956 with The Green Wall, a collection of formalist verse that was awarded the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize. But by the early 1960's, Wright, increasingly influenced by the Spanish language surrealists, had dropped fixed meters. His transformation achieved its maximum expression with the publication of the seminal The Branch Will Not Break (1963), which positioned Wright as curious counterpoint to the Beats and New York schools, which predominated on the American coasts.
This transformation had not come by accident, as Wright had been working for years with his friend Robert Bly, collaborating on the translation of world poets in the influential magazine The Fifties (later The Sixties). Such influences fertilized Wright's unique perspective and helped put the Midwest back on the poetic map.
Wright had discovered a terse, imagistic, free verse of clarity, and power. During the next ten years Wright would go on to pen some of the most beloved and frequently anthologized masterpieces of the century, such as "A Blessing," "Autumn Begins in Martin's Ferry, Ohio," and "I Am a Sioux Indian Brave, He Said to Me in Minneapolis."
Technically, Wright was an innovator, especially in the use of his titles, first lines, and last lines, which he used to great dramatic effect in defense of the lives of the disenfranchised. He is equally well known for his tender depictions of the bleak landscapes of the post-industrial American Midwest. Since his death, Wright has developed a cult following, transforming him into a seminal writer of ever increasing influence. Each year, hundreds of writers gather to pay tribute at the James Wright Poetry Festival in Martin's Ferry.
Wright's son Franz Wright is also a poet. Together they are the only parent/child pair to have won a Pulitzer Prize in the same category (Poetry).
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[edit] Life
James Arlington Wright was born in Martins Ferry,Ohio, approximately 50 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Wright was born into a family of Irish talkers and storytellers on December 13, 1927, in Martins Ferry, Ohio. His Midwestern working-class roots held firm through three decades of poetic portraits drawn from heartland realities. During the Depression, his father suffered layoffs from the Hazel-Atlas glass factory. Wright thrived on public speaking in grade school and began writing verse in high school. After being drafted into the United States Army during World War II, he wrote his mother to forward copies of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ verse and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. After he was mustered out while serving in occupied Japan, he took advantage of the G. I. Bill and entered the only school that showed interest, Kenyon College. After Wright shifted his concentration from vocational education to English and Russian literature, by 1952 he had published in twenty journals and earned the Robert Frost Poetry Prize, election to Phi Beta Kappa, and a B.A. degree. He attended the University of Vienna on a Fulbright Fellowship. At the University of Washington, he studied under poet Theodore Roethke and completed a dissertation on Dickensian comedy, then earned a Ph.D. in 1959. Simultaneously, he held a post as English instructor at the University of Minnesota while completing The Green Wall (1957), winner of a Yale Series of Younger Poets award. Three years later, he won the Ohiona Book Award for Saint Judas (1960). Wright published The Lion’s Tail and Eyes: Poems Written Out of Laziness and Silence (1962) with William Duffy and Robert Bly. Wright’s break with traditionalism was influenced by his intimate study of German and Spanish masters, as demonstrated in The Branch Will Not Break (1963) and Shall We Gather at the River (1968). Throughout this period, he published regularly in some fifteen journals. Wright held subsequent teaching positions at Macalester College, Hunter College, and State University of New York. His Collected Poems (1971) won a Pulitzer Prize. He was active for the remainder of the 1970s, when his elegies were issued in Two Citizens (1973), I See the Wind (1974), Old Booksellers and Other Poems (1976), Moments of the Italian Summer (1976), and To a Blossoming Pear Tree (1978). Much of the self-pity and despair of his early works disappeared after Wright conquered alcoholism and married his traveling companion Edith Anne Runk, whom he incorporated in a series of “Annie” poems. At his death from throat cancer on March 27, 1980, friends and colleagues eulogized him at Riverside Church in New York City. Posthumous works include This Journey (1982), The Temple in Nimes (1982), and Above the River: The Complete Poems (1992). el-producing towns along the heavily industrialized Upper Ohio River Valley as it borders West Virginia and Pennsylvania. He was born in 1927, two years before the American stock market crash of 1929 to a father who worked in the Hazel-Atlas Glass factory and a mother who worked in laundry. He graduated from high school in 1946. Wright then joined the army and was stationed in Japan during the American occupation of that country.
Wright later attended Kenyon College, from which he graduated cum laude in 1951, after which he received a Fulbright Fellowship and travelled to Vienna, Austria. In 1954 he went to the University of Washington where he studied with poets Theodore Roethke and Stanley Kunitz. That year, when he was still a graduate student, W. H. Auden selected Wright's manuscript for publication in the Yale Younger Poets Series. In 1957, when his book of poems, The Green Wall, was published, he joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota where his colleagues were Allen Tate and John Berryman. In 1959, he earned a PhD from the University of Washington with a dissertation on Charles Dickens and his second collection, Saint Judas, was published in the Wesleyan University Press series. During this period, Wright contributed poetry and book reviews to major publications like the Sewannee Review and regularly published in virtually every important journal, from The New Yorker to the New Orleans Poetry Review. Nonetheless, the University of Minnesota did not believe he had the qualifications to become a tenured professor, and Wright had to relocate to nearby Macalester College.
Wright married his high school sweetheart Liberty Kardules, who was a nurse in Texas. The couple had two sons, Franz and Marshall. Wright left his wife in 1959, and they divorced in 1962. In 1966, he took a job at Hunter College in New York where he met Edith Ann Runk, the "Annie" of many of his poems. They were married shortly after his move to New York at the Riverside Church in April of 1967. Annie was very good for Wright and helped him tone down his drinking. They spent a number of summers in Italy and Paris.
Wright died on March 25, 1980 shortly after being diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. His funeral was held at the same Riverside Church where he had married Annie.
[edit] Poetry
Wright's early poetry is relatively conventional in form and meter, especially compared with his later, looser poetry. His work with translations of German and South American poets, as well as the influence of Robert Bly, had considerable influence on his own poems; this is most evident in Shall We Gather at the River, which departs radically from the formal style of Wright's previous book, Saint Judas.
His poetry often deals with the disenfranchised, or the outsider, American; yet it is also often inward probing. Wright suffered from depression and bipolar mood disorders and also battled alcoholism his entire life. He experienced several nervous breakdowns, was hospitalized, and was subjected to electroshock therapy. His dark moods and focus on emotional suffering were part of his life and often the focus of his poetry, although given the emotional turmoil he experienced personally, his poems are often remarkably optimistic in expressing a faith in life and human transcendence. His seminal 1963 volume The Branch Will Not Break is one example of his belief in the human spirit.
His 1972 Collected Poems was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to his other awards, Wright received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
[edit] Works
[edit] Published in his lifetime
Unless otherwise noted, year is when published:[1]
- The Green Wall (1957)[1]
- Saint Judas (1959)[1]
- The Branch Will Not Break (1963)[1]
- Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio (1963)
- Shall We Gather at the River (1967)[1]
- Collected Poems (1971)[1]
- Two Citizens (1973)
- Moments of the Italian Summer (1976)
- To a Blossoming Pear Tree (1977)
[edit] Published posthumously
- This Journey (1982; completed in 1980)
- The Temple at Nimes (1982)
- Above the River - the Complete Poems, introduction by Donald Hall (1992)
- Selected Poems (2005)
- A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright (2005)
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c d e f Brunner, Edward, "James Wright: Biographical Sketch", Modern American Poetry website, accessed April 19, 2008
