Welcome to The James Wright Poetry and Works Page
WELCOME!! My name is Greg Haitz. This web page is a little different than most. I've decided to dedicate most of the site to the Great American Poet, James Wright. I would like to share with you what I know of this poet and of his work. Below you will find a biography on James Wight that I have put
together, as well as a Proceed button which will take you to
some poems by James Wright. Please enjoy, and remember to e-mail
me and tell me what you think. I hope that this web page will
help better inform you on one of our greatest American poets. I'm also working on some of my own poetry, so please make sure you check that page out as well.
Biography
James Arlington Wright was born on December 13,1927, in Martins Ferry, Ohio. His father, Dudley Wright, worked inthe Hazel-Atlas Glass factory most
of his life. His father would occasionally be layed-off when things were
slow. Wright described his father as ". . . a handsome man of great
physical strength and the greatest human strength of all, an enduring
gentleness in the presence of the hardship that the Great Depression brought
to everyone. . ." His mother is rarely mentioned and he was the middle
of three sons. His life as a child in Ohio was bleak and seemingly
hopeless with the poverty and suffering which surrounded him in the small
valley of Martins Ferry. Wright's whole life was aimed at leaving the
small Ohio city and avoiding his father's fate of factory work. While
in high school, James wrote an autobiography describing his "career as a visionary" starting in the second grade. His passion for poetry was marked
at a young age, as he had a great love for reading and even quoting William Dunbar's, "Lament for the Markaris." Wright missed a year of high school
when he was sixteen due to a nervous breakdown. There were more breakdowns,
but Wright did manage to graduate.After being drafted to the army in 1946, Wright had petitioned his mother on numerous occasions to send the address
of his former English instructor. He also requested that she send copies of poetry from Gerald Manley Hopkins and "Sonnets from the Portuguese," by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Wright had heard from a fellow army officer, who was also from Ohio, of Kenyon College back in his home state. He made
plans to attend the college after leaving the army, by means of the G.I.
bill. This would be his chance to escape the fate of his father and the
tragic life of a factory worker. He sent home most of his military salary
for savings in the hope of later attending the college. Prospects were
looking up for Wright, as he was accepted to Kenyon College, "the most
literary enclave in the state of Ohio, with its poet [John Crowe] Ransom,
its tradition of writer-students, and The Kenyon Review, which was the
journal of its literary moment" (Hall xxvi). The college was just the
source of escape that James needed. Having such teachers as Charles Coffin, Philip Timberlake, and Ransom, it provided great opportunity for literary achievement. Later, during Wright's junior year, he hit a wall when his G.I. bill ran out, but with his brain and intelligence, James worked out ways of continuing till he finally graduated. While at Kenyon, "Wright was elected
to Phi Beta Kappa, won the Robert Frost Poetry Prize, and published more
than twenty poems in literary magazines" ("Language" 1). Wright's
achievements helped support his feeling of self worth. His classmates were mostly middle class, in contrast to his family being of the working class of Ohio. Upon graduation, Wright married his high-school sweetheart, Liberty Kardules, who was a nurse and teacher in Texas. Wright, with a Fulbright grant, took his wife to Vienna were he studied at the University of Vienna. They had their first child, Franz, while in Vienna. After spending his time at the university working on and translating the poems of Georg Trakl and the stories of Theodor Storm, Wright and his new family returned to the U.S. He enrolled at the University of Washington where he studied under the instruction of such faculty members as Roethke and Wayne Burns. It was while at this university that his manuscript, "The Green Wall," was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award. Earning his master's and doctorate degrees, Wright decided to teach literature at the University of Minnesota. His former professor (Roethke) , however, had been a large influence on James. When James finished his Ph.D., Roethke's graduation present was a ticket to the world heavyweight championship bout of 1957 (Hall xxviii). Roethke's influence on Wright was more than just literary. They both shared the same bipolar mood disorder, as well as the same mannerisms while in the company of large crowds; both Wright and Roethke were "provincial, literary, and shy; both relied on comic routines to get them through social situations . . . " (Hall xxviii). Wright also had been corresponding with a fellow poet of his day, Donald Hall, in which he had written multiple paged, monologs of his drinking and depression. More of Biography...
Proceed...
This page designed by Gregory Haitz gregdc2b@juno.com
