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James Wright, James A Wright, James Arlington Wright
Featured Poet: James Wright
| How does a great
poet think? How does he evolve his artistic gifts? There is something
about the very form and occasion of a letter--the possibility it offers, the
chance to be as open and tentative and uncertain as one likes and also the
chance to formulate certain ideas, very precisely--if one is lucky in one's
thoughts," wrote James Wright, one of the great lyric
poets of the last century, in a
letter to a friend. A Wild Perfection is a compelling collection
that captures the exhilarating and moving correspondence between Wright and
his many friends. In letters to fellow poets Donald Hall, Theodore Roethke,
Galway Kinnell, James Dickey, Mary Oliver, and Robert Bly, Wright explored
subjects from his creative process to his struggles with depression and
illness. |
Lucky Me! Last January, I sat in an auditorium in Bennington Vermont and
heard
Robert Bly
and
Donald Hall
offer a their first person reflections on the life and writing of James Wright.
With recent releases of works and letters of
The
Urge To Travel Long DistancesWright, it seems appropriate to feature this poet who stood mired in a life of suffering, yet always found a way to delicately touch the authenticity of life.
Bly interspersed his conversation with impromptu recitations. His booming and raspy voice emphasized the epiphanic twists common to Wright’s work. Bly elevated his palm the entire distance of his tall arm in a swoosh, which I believe I heard. "Verticality" he said. There is a moment in Wright’s poetry where the readers’ mind is twisted. The readers’ thoughts tread new ground; the metaphor changes the reader.
One of the lasting impressions from Donald Hall’s recollections was of Wright's dear wife, Anne. According to Hall, she helped
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| The Museum of Clear Ideas |
 Life
Work |
The
Best Day The Worst Dayhim to find a wholeness he’d never known, or perhaps, she only kept him from
coming completely apart. As Hall, lost his wife, poet Jane Kenyon,
to a virulent cancer, he seemed to
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Jane Kenyon
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have a special appreciation of the contribution a spouse can make in the life of an artist. My synopsis of Hall’s rendering was that Wright was a tortured soul, under appreciated by his University employers and stressed by his manic depression. His work, however, is not bathed in the pathos of suffering; it is the work of a man seeking meaning in the beauty of the world and in the power of poetry. He found it.
----Amy L Jenkins
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More Poetry by the Pulitzer-Winning Poet, James Wright |
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