A Wild Perfection
The Selected Letters of James Wright
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
The life and work of a major American poet described in his own words.
"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.
A bright thread of wit, gallantry, and passion for describing his travels and his beloved natural world runs through these letters, which begin in 1946 in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, the hometown he would memorialize in verse, and end in New York City, where he lived for the last fourteen years of his life. Selected Letters is no less than an epistolary chronicle of a significant part of the midcentury American poetry renaissance, as well as the clearest biographical picture now available of a major American poet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer Prize winning poet Wright (1927 1980) is well served by his wife and Maley, an English professor specializing in his verse, who have gathered nearly 35 years' worth of correspondence, from his high school graduation to his death. The letters begin in 1946; Wright has already started translating foreign poets into English, informing a teacher that "Catullus is as dear to me as are sleep and music." Through the decades, his rough translations of poets from Rilke to Lorca also find their way into his correspondence. Wright could go on at great length, especially to his closest friends, who included fellow poets such as Robert Bly and James Dickey in the latter case, only after Wright offered a humble apology for responding angrily to a bad review. Short biographical notes preface each of the book's sections, but more context would have been welcome for matters such as Wright's "catathymic" (i.e., manic) depression. For many, though, the most valuable material will be an appendix of more than 50 pages of previously unpublished poems and early drafts of published work. That, and the raw evidence of Wright's personal voice with its passion for poetry and deep sensitivity to others greatly enhance our understanding of his poetry.
