James Wright

1927-1980

A very good biography from the Modern American Poetry page.

And here's the Academy of American Poets site.

James Wright was born a coal miner's daughter... well, okay. He was born the son of a factory worker--but he lived in coal mining country: Martins Ferry, Ohio, perilously close to West Virginia, an area that managed to be both rural and industrial at the same time. The biographies above talk in more detail about his leaving Ohio, and All his life, he was ambivalent about the place he came from, loving and hating it at the same time. Late in his life, he and his wife Annie discovered Italy, and spent much time there; it formed an interesting contrast to Ohio. Throughout his poetry, Wright has ambivalent feelings about America--perhaps not hard to understand when you consider where he came from, what people's lives were like there, and the fact that he grew up during the Depression and saw the McCarthy hearings, Vietnam, Watergate...

Wright translated a number of Latin American, Spanish, and German poets into English; their surrealist style and intuitive logic had an effect on his poetry, which often leaps from one image to another, or uses unusual imagery to describe something--"Lying in a Hammock..." is one example. Several of the poems below also show this characteristic. To read these poems, you've got to be willing to free associate, to let your own inutition do the walking. Wright's later poems are generally less surreal, and he starts experimenting with prose poetry as a form. (We read "May Morning" earlier this semester--that's one of Wright's.) His leaps in these poems are not often as great, but you still have to be willing to follow him.

A Photo Gallery

Take a look at some of these pictures after you read the poems, to get a sense of the place Wright's coming from.

(All images from The Times Leader, Belmont County, Ohio. If you right-click on any of the pictures and choose View Image, you'll see a larger version.)

Some football players in Martins Ferry.

Autumn begins, indeed...

Ready for the game. (Scroll down to Aug. 19)

Some working-class men from Martins Ferry.

Miners in Ohio.

A bridge over troubled water.

And also, some pictures of Italy, for contrast.