Book description
These new poems by the author of Saint Judas and The Green Wall embody
a sharp break with his earlier work. Their impact is well described by
the British critic Michael Hamburger: "He has absorbed the work of
modern Spanish and other continental poets and evolved a medium of his
own. This medium dispenses with argument and rhetoric, and presents the
pure substance of poetry, images which are 'the objective correlatives'
of emotion and feeling. It is only in the new collection that Wright has
found this wholly distinctive voice."
Mr. Wright is well known for his previous books and his contributions to
virtually every literary journal of importance. His numerous honors
include a Fullbright fellowship, a Kenyon Review fellowship, and many
other prizes and awards. "His is a world haunted by the past and
apprehensive of the future. It is, symbolically, the world of
contemporary experience."--Gene Baro, The New York Times Book
Review JAMES WRIGHT was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, in 1927. He was
well known for his translations of such Spanish poets as Pablo Neruda
and Cesar Vallejo and for his poems about the Midwest. He received the
Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1972 for his Collected Poems. Other books
of his published by Wesleyan are Saint Judas, Shall We Gather at the
River, and Above the River: The Complete Poems (co published with
Farrar, Straus and Giroux). James Wright died on March 26, 1980, at the
age of 52.
