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Wesleyan Poetry Program
The Branch Will Not Break: Empty-Grave Extended Edition
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Wright shines in the Empty-Grave Extended Edition of THE BRANCH WILL NOT BREAK.
This beautifully bound 6" by 9" trade paperback also contains a complete word-frequency report for readers that wish to delve further into interpretation.
The publisher has done everything possible to ensure the main body of text in this book matches its original 1963 release; this includes page size, vertical and horizontal alignment of each individual poem and its separate stanzas, verses that span multiple pages, and non-traditional use of white space.
In these forty-three poems the wordsmith weaves together visions of nature and the decay of American life in true form. Readers can further dig their teeth into interpretation and theme via the comprehensive Word Frequency Report available only in this Empty-Grave release.
Complete list of
As I Step Over a Puddle at the End of Winter, I Think of an Ancient Chinese Governor
Goodbye to the Poetry of Calcium
In Fear of Harvests
Three Stanzas From Goethe
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
The Jewel
In the Face of Hatred
Fear Is What Quickens Me
A Message Hidden in an Empty Wine Bottle That I Threw into a Cully of Maple Trees One Night at an Indecent Hour
Stages on a Journey Westward
How My Fever Left
Miners In Ohio
Two Poems About President Harding
Eisenhower's Visit to Franco, 1959
In Memory of a Spanish Poet
The Undermining of the Defense Economy
Twilights
Two Hangovers
Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me
Two Horses Playing in the Orchard
By a Lake in Minnesota
Beginning
From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower
March
Trying to Pray
Two Spring Charms
Spring Images
Arriving in the Country Again
In the Cold House
Snowstorm in the Midwest
Having Lost My Sons, I Confront the Wreckage of the Christmas, 1960
American Wedding
A Prayer to Escape From the Market Place
Rain
Today I Was Happy, So I Made this Poem
Mary Bly
To the Evening Central Minnesota
I Was Afraid of Dying
A Blessing
Milkweed
A Dream of Burial
This beautifully bound 6" by 9" trade paperback also contains a complete word-frequency report for readers that wish to delve further into interpretation.
The publisher has done everything possible to ensure the main body of text in this book matches its original 1963 release; this includes page size, vertical and horizontal alignment of each individual poem and its separate stanzas, verses that span multiple pages, and non-traditional use of white space.
In these forty-three poems the wordsmith weaves together visions of nature and the decay of American life in true form. Readers can further dig their teeth into interpretation and theme via the comprehensive Word Frequency Report available only in this Empty-Grave release.
Complete list of
As I Step Over a Puddle at the End of Winter, I Think of an Ancient Chinese Governor
Goodbye to the Poetry of Calcium
In Fear of Harvests
Three Stanzas From Goethe
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
The Jewel
In the Face of Hatred
Fear Is What Quickens Me
A Message Hidden in an Empty Wine Bottle That I Threw into a Cully of Maple Trees One Night at an Indecent Hour
Stages on a Journey Westward
How My Fever Left
Miners In Ohio
Two Poems About President Harding
Eisenhower's Visit to Franco, 1959
In Memory of a Spanish Poet
The Undermining of the Defense Economy
Twilights
Two Hangovers
Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me
Two Horses Playing in the Orchard
By a Lake in Minnesota
Beginning
From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower
March
Trying to Pray
Two Spring Charms
Spring Images
Arriving in the Country Again
In the Cold House
Snowstorm in the Midwest
Having Lost My Sons, I Confront the Wreckage of the Christmas, 1960
American Wedding
A Prayer to Escape From the Market Place
Rain
Today I Was Happy, So I Made this Poem
Mary Bly
To the Evening Central Minnesota
I Was Afraid of Dying
A Blessing
Milkweed
A Dream of Burial
108 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
November 14, 2019
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” When I first heard this Emily Dickinson quote, I knew exactly what she meant. After all, I had read The Branch Will Not Break when I was eighteen.
It was 1967. I was already writing verse--very bad verse--and immersing myself in Frost, Pound and Stevens, but the wonders of the poems in Wright's third collection were a revelation to me. Sure, some reminded me of Pound's Chinese imitations, and some sounded like the Lorca and Neruda I had read in translation in an anthology of world poetry I once borrowed from the Norwood Public Library. But these poems of Wright's were something else again, surreal yet accessible, crowded with heart-shattering images born in darkness and love, and—perhaps of greatest importance to me then—they were about my America, my Midwest, my Ohio, written in free-verse as immediate and straightforward as the prose of Twain, Kerouac or Kesey—yet well crafted and elegant, with a rich, subtle music.
I have to admit, though, not every poem in this little book “blows my top” today like it did back then. After all, Wright's (and his friend Robert Bly's) innovations have been widely imitated throughout the last fifty years, until their “deep image” style (particular their studied use of powerful Anglo-Saxon nouns like "wind" and "stone," "water" and "dark") now seems as familiar a part of our 21st century poetic practice as Miltonic syntax and diction once seemed to the sonnet writers of the 19th century. No, not every poem here still takes the top of my head off. But almost two-thirds of them (32 out of 48 pages) still do.
There are at least twelve acknowledged masterpieces in this little book: “As I Step Over a Puddle at the End of Winter, I Think of an Ancient Chinese Governor,” “Goodbye to the Poetry of Calcium,” “In Fear of Harvests,” “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio,” “Lying on a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota,” “The Jewel,” “Fear is What Quickens Me,” “Two Hangovers,” “Depressed By a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me,” “Having Lost My Sons, I Confront the Wreckage of the Moon: Christmas 1960,” and the inimitable, incomparable “A Blessing.” (Notice that one of the things Wright is a master of is the very, very long title.) But I think there are other poems here just as good as most of the above, such as “Eisenhower's Visit to Franco: 1959,” “The Undermining of the Defense Economy” (political diatribes which are also excellent poems—something very hard to do), and that dark elegy for the frontier, “Stages on a Journey Westward.” And a handful of others too.
Perhaps one of the reasons for the book's endearing quality is that for the first time Wright's joy seemed to triumph--occasionally but powerfully--over despair. It it is as if the discovery of a new kind of American speech—far removed from his early formalist verse—caused Wright's spirit to soar. The American darkness, its hunted and its misfits, still haunt his verse, but there are moments here when—like the blue jay in a pine tree featured in “Two Hangovers”--Wright warbles with new lyricism, with even a touch of optimism, convinced that, at least for this particular moment, “the branch" upon which he sings "will not break.”
I have chosen three specimens to end my review, the first one because I believe it to be one of the finest examples of personification in American poetry (and also because it shows Wright's gentle humor), the second because it perfectly evokes the countryside surrounding my present home of Columbus, Ohio, and the third because it shows James Wright in one of his (all too rare) moments of perfect joy.
HOW MY FEVER LEFT
I can still hear her.
She hobbles downstairs to the kitchen.
She is swearing at the dishes.
She slaps her grease rags into a basket,
And slings it over her skinny forearm, crooked
With hatred, and stomps outside.
I can hear my father downstairs,
Standing without a coat in the open back door,
Calling to the old bat across the snow.
She's forgotten her black shawl,
But I see her through my window, sneering,
Flapping upward
Toward some dark church on the hill.
She has to meet somebody else, and
Its no use, she won't listen,
She's gone.
FROM A BUS WINDOW IN CENTRAL OHIO, JUST BEFORE A THUNDER SHOWER
Cribs loaded with roughage huddle together
Before the north clouds.
The wind tiptoes between poplars.
The silver maple leaves squint
Toward the ground.
An old farmer, his scarlet face
Apologetic with whiskey, swings back a barn door
And calls a hundred black-and-white Holsteins
from a clover field.
TODAY I WAS SO HAPPY, SO I MADE THIS POEM
As the plump squirrel scampers
Across the roof of the corncrib,
The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness,
And I see that it is impossible to die.
Each moment of time is a mountain.
An eagle rejoices in the oak trees of heaven,
Crying
This is what I wanted.
August 1, 2025
It's summer, and so my mind turns as it does every year to this book which I have given to dozens of people, one of my very favorite books of poetry ever. I heard him and his buddy Robert Bly read/recite from memory three years together at the Grand Valley State Poetry Festival, in the seventies. These are two of my favorite poems ever, both of which I read aloud to groups of young people today:
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
January 25, 2016
Nature poetry - I somehow never cared for it. But even Wordsworth would be a Wright fan. Poetry should be felt; not read. And boy, do you feel this.
May 15, 2007
I know this book like I know my burned copy of 'August and Everything After'.
"Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into Blossom"
Perfect.
"Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into Blossom"
Perfect.
May 10, 2007
James Wright makes me want to lick the pages. "I have wasted my life."
May 14, 2015
I have just re-read this collection. I am thinking that if ever there were one volume where you could register the break from an Audenesque intelligent formalism to a free-spirited (yes, 60s!) almost-Chinese use of images in an American mode: this is the book!
I think it is high-time for a James Wright reevaluation in the American poetry tradition (ignoring his son's work for maybe a decade or so....)
I think it is high-time for a James Wright reevaluation in the American poetry tradition (ignoring his son's work for maybe a decade or so....)
February 5, 2017
After reading The Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters Between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright in grad school, I decided I wanted to read James Wright's poetry (already being a fan of Leslie Marmon Silko). However, it's been about four years, and I'm just now reading one of his collections. That's what happens when you have hundreds of books picked up in exactly the same way. I can only read so many!
But last night I was in the poetry mood, and after forcing myself to pick up a poet other than Mary Oliver (because I really should read some of those other poets on my shelf), I settled on James Wright and read this collection in a single sitting, and that's with me reading each poem two or three times (which is how I read poetry).
At first, I was a bit disappointed. The poems themselves are superbly crafted, but they just weren't my kind of poems. They often reference historical figures I know very little about; for instance, there are three poems about U.S. presidents. Even his nature poems--more to my taste--in the beginning had a tendency to be a bit melodramatic to me. He ends the poem "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" with the line "I have wasted my life." That got an eye roll. I guess it's 'telling' too much for me.
However, about halfway through there's a slight switch in tone. More nature poems are scattered throughout, and they're quieter than the earlier ones. Like this one:
Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me
Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins
In the maple trees.
Or this one:
Milkweed
While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.
These, I like. These, I'll reread.
This isn't to say that this is a 'mixed bag' of poetry. The poems still connect in tone and theme and imagery, and I can see why it receives so many 5 star ratings, and why so many say he's their favorite poet. While James Wright won't be vying for my favorites list, I did enjoy several poems in this collection, and respect his craft.
3.5/5
But last night I was in the poetry mood, and after forcing myself to pick up a poet other than Mary Oliver (because I really should read some of those other poets on my shelf), I settled on James Wright and read this collection in a single sitting, and that's with me reading each poem two or three times (which is how I read poetry).
At first, I was a bit disappointed. The poems themselves are superbly crafted, but they just weren't my kind of poems. They often reference historical figures I know very little about; for instance, there are three poems about U.S. presidents. Even his nature poems--more to my taste--in the beginning had a tendency to be a bit melodramatic to me. He ends the poem "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" with the line "I have wasted my life." That got an eye roll. I guess it's 'telling' too much for me.
However, about halfway through there's a slight switch in tone. More nature poems are scattered throughout, and they're quieter than the earlier ones. Like this one:
Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me
Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins
In the maple trees.
Or this one:
Milkweed
While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.
These, I like. These, I'll reread.
This isn't to say that this is a 'mixed bag' of poetry. The poems still connect in tone and theme and imagery, and I can see why it receives so many 5 star ratings, and why so many say he's their favorite poet. While James Wright won't be vying for my favorites list, I did enjoy several poems in this collection, and respect his craft.
3.5/5
March 22, 2019
James Wright was a Pulitzer Prize award winner (1972) and, with this poetry book, he presents to the reader a rollercoaster of emotions and feelings.
Dark feelings and emotional sufferings (e.g. "I was afraid of dying"; "Fear is what quickens me") are well represented during this collection of poems, where Human spirituality, obscure past events, nostalgic moments are some of the main thematics in this poetic work. In another hand, Wright expresses optimistic feelings towards Human life, as well as enjoyment moments (e.g." Today I was so happy, so I made this poem"). The concept of nature is also profoundly detailed as an important element in the author's life (e.g."Spring Images"; "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio").
Overall, I personally sensed that Wright highlights American decadence and its past in a dramatic manner. A bleak existence that can be transcended and succeeded. A bright and hopeful future...
DEPRESSED BY A BOOK OF BAD POETRY, I WALK TOWARD AN UNUSED
PASTURE AND INVITE THE INSECTS TO JOIN ME
"Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment, and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins
In the maple trees."
This is personally the poem I enjoyed the most. Wright's harmony with nature in a moment of sadness is deeply presented in these verses.
Looking forward to read more about deep image poetry in order to enhance my poetic palate!
Rating: 3.8/5 stars
Dark feelings and emotional sufferings (e.g. "I was afraid of dying"; "Fear is what quickens me") are well represented during this collection of poems, where Human spirituality, obscure past events, nostalgic moments are some of the main thematics in this poetic work. In another hand, Wright expresses optimistic feelings towards Human life, as well as enjoyment moments (e.g." Today I was so happy, so I made this poem"). The concept of nature is also profoundly detailed as an important element in the author's life (e.g."Spring Images"; "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio").
Overall, I personally sensed that Wright highlights American decadence and its past in a dramatic manner. A bleak existence that can be transcended and succeeded. A bright and hopeful future...
DEPRESSED BY A BOOK OF BAD POETRY, I WALK TOWARD AN UNUSED
PASTURE AND INVITE THE INSECTS TO JOIN ME
"Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment, and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins
In the maple trees."
This is personally the poem I enjoyed the most. Wright's harmony with nature in a moment of sadness is deeply presented in these verses.
Looking forward to read more about deep image poetry in order to enhance my poetic palate!
Rating: 3.8/5 stars
December 11, 2019
This collection of poems gets stronger as it proceeds until it crescendos in spiritual succor. I have so many words and phrases underlined that I might as well not have underlined any...for instance, in "A Blessing" Wright describes standing before a wild horse in the darkness as "a light breeze moves me to caress her long ear/that is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist./Suddenly I realize/that if I stepped out of my body I would break/Into blossom." My goodness.
First, as a sufferer I a chronic disease, that last line really slew me. Second, "delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist" puts any simile I've ever written, ever THOUGHT of, to shame.
In another poem, Wright tells us "the moon is out hunting...walking down hallways of a diamond." I have no intellectual clue what a diamond's hallways are...but intuitively, this line resonates and carries a tremendous lightness and spirit. It's a real treat to walk the hallways of Wright's poems.
First, as a sufferer I a chronic disease, that last line really slew me. Second, "delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist" puts any simile I've ever written, ever THOUGHT of, to shame.
In another poem, Wright tells us "the moon is out hunting...walking down hallways of a diamond." I have no intellectual clue what a diamond's hallways are...but intuitively, this line resonates and carries a tremendous lightness and spirit. It's a real treat to walk the hallways of Wright's poems.
May 20, 2014
James Wright's poetry is like a beautiful hallucination. You think when you read A Blessing in school, that beautiful ending line about breaking out into blossom, and you think that's as good as it gets. But it gets better. Or, just as good. With some not so good ones thrown in, but there aren't an awful lot of those. And the titles, the titles are great! Who writes a poem and calls it" Today I was So Happy, So I Made This Poem"? Takes guts. No one could get away with that today.
Beauty, sadness, pretty little pictures of perfect moments. That's what James Wright's poems are to me. Even the dark ones.
Beauty, sadness, pretty little pictures of perfect moments. That's what James Wright's poems are to me. Even the dark ones.
December 11, 2023
A beautiful mosaic of the triumphs and failings of the American Dream. There are definitely stand out pieces but read as a whole it is an incredible experience.
June 3, 2025
I started this book in March and was struggling to get into it a bit but now that Spring has passed, I felt more open to the themes and imagery encased in this. The second half of the book was definitely stronger than the first for me.
The imagery is easy to touch. It felt like reading poems from someone who is writing them while standing outside of his own body, looking at a different world, a different self.
Also there was a line in one of the poems that also shows up in Walking to Martha's Vineyard which was a really nice surprise (and so fitting in both collections) as someone who read Franz’s work before this one!
The imagery is easy to touch. It felt like reading poems from someone who is writing them while standing outside of his own body, looking at a different world, a different self.
Also there was a line in one of the poems that also shows up in Walking to Martha's Vineyard which was a really nice surprise (and so fitting in both collections) as someone who read Franz’s work before this one!
January 6, 2024
My favorite poetry collection by the father of my favorite poet. Not that I know a lot about James Wright by any means, but after rereading his first two books this seems to be the one where he shifts from more metric, iambic forms to poems with shorter lines and more free verse. Lots of short poems with long, rambly titles, and a TON of nature/animal imagery. I don't know how true James Wright fans and scholars feel about this book, but I've loved it for over a decade.
May 2, 2020
Natalie Goldberg mentions this book one of her memoirs, and it is lovely. I folded the corners of like 3 poems. A great book to read on a chilly spring morning.
July 4, 2025
Sometimes you need to be reminded what it can be, what it can do.
September 24, 2022
Transcendent.
May 11, 2012
Another book I can't not give five stars to despite certain reservations upon rereading it.
This was one of the poetry collections that made me, as an undergrad, want to become a poet. Now, fast-forward roughly ten years, and I find it a bit rarefied, too delicate, passive, and morose. I did start to question how many times a poet can get away with writing "dark" in a poem, and was reminded of what poet Steve Orlen once said to a classmate of mine: "Do all poems want to be beautiful?" If you're interested in an exploration and gentle critique of Wright's early work, look at Robert Hass' essay on James Wright in "20th Century Pleasures."
But despite some qualifications, I still find this a lyrical, imagistic, surprising, resilient, formative book. And I enjoyed teaching it to undergrads (a funny reversal!). We used Richard Hugo's essay on "Writing off the Subject" in "The Triggering Town" as a lens. Though Hugo's whole essay applies, I especially love these irreverent words in relation to Wright:
"To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance, not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write. By arrogance I mean that when you are writing you must assume that the next thing you put down belongs not for reasons of logic, good sense, or narrative development, but because you put it there. You, the same person who said that, also said this. The adhesive force is your way of writing, not sensible connection."
This was one of the poetry collections that made me, as an undergrad, want to become a poet. Now, fast-forward roughly ten years, and I find it a bit rarefied, too delicate, passive, and morose. I did start to question how many times a poet can get away with writing "dark" in a poem, and was reminded of what poet Steve Orlen once said to a classmate of mine: "Do all poems want to be beautiful?" If you're interested in an exploration and gentle critique of Wright's early work, look at Robert Hass' essay on James Wright in "20th Century Pleasures."
But despite some qualifications, I still find this a lyrical, imagistic, surprising, resilient, formative book. And I enjoyed teaching it to undergrads (a funny reversal!). We used Richard Hugo's essay on "Writing off the Subject" in "The Triggering Town" as a lens. Though Hugo's whole essay applies, I especially love these irreverent words in relation to Wright:
"To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance, not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write. By arrogance I mean that when you are writing you must assume that the next thing you put down belongs not for reasons of logic, good sense, or narrative development, but because you put it there. You, the same person who said that, also said this. The adhesive force is your way of writing, not sensible connection."
September 14, 2012
Short, brief poems that have spectacular build up and endings. In this collection there is Wright's famous poem, "A Blessing" near the end of the book; however, what I find really strong with the book is the definitions of terms built up so "dark" means another thing, as of other seemingly innocuous words like "friend" or "mare."
Aside for "A Blessing" there are a lot of strong poems which I feel could be read individually as well as part of a collection, "The Undermining of the Defense Economy," "Twilights," "Fear is What Quickens Me" just to name a few that I've marked for me to read again.
I would highly recommend this book for someone seeing how a collection should be crafted. I understand how people could get tired of the "darkness" references; however, I feel there's a reason for the symbol to be defined and redefined consistently (maybe too consistently).
A great read, will read again -- 5 Stars.
Aside for "A Blessing" there are a lot of strong poems which I feel could be read individually as well as part of a collection, "The Undermining of the Defense Economy," "Twilights," "Fear is What Quickens Me" just to name a few that I've marked for me to read again.
I would highly recommend this book for someone seeing how a collection should be crafted. I understand how people could get tired of the "darkness" references; however, I feel there's a reason for the symbol to be defined and redefined consistently (maybe too consistently).
A great read, will read again -- 5 Stars.
April 1, 2011
I bought this slim volume of poetry months ago because of its high rating on Goodreads. On the jacket of the book it says it should be read at least 3X s and then maybe once a month of as long as one lives. The first time I tried to read it....I was not impressed.....did not get the couple poems I read and set it aside. I decided to try it again.....and really liked it. Most of the poems are simple and elegant . The third time I've read it.....some poems are wonderful....some still mystify me.
February 14, 2013
One of the great books of American poetry. I don't know why it took me so long to make my way to James Wright, but don't make my mistake--read him today!
Wright is, not inaccurately, categorized as a pastoral poet, but what delighted me about so many of the poems in The Branch Will Not Break was the easy confluence of industrial, agricultural, and bucolic scenes and images. It provides an accurate and stirring vision of the way these different modes intertwine in the lives of Midwesterners, but it has been difficult for poets or novelists (and very difficult for historians) to capture.
Wright is, not inaccurately, categorized as a pastoral poet, but what delighted me about so many of the poems in The Branch Will Not Break was the easy confluence of industrial, agricultural, and bucolic scenes and images. It provides an accurate and stirring vision of the way these different modes intertwine in the lives of Midwesterners, but it has been difficult for poets or novelists (and very difficult for historians) to capture.
April 18, 2016
I'm not the hugest fan of poetry, but I'm taking a poetry class and this was one of the collections we're reading. I read through it in about twenty minutes, mostly because the author is from around where I live and I wanted to see what he wrote about. That said, I actually liked it. I'm not the best at deciphering what is being said in poetry, but this collection was pretty easy to breeze through and I didn't have too much difficulty with it. I found several of the poems to be quite beautiful. All in all, it was an enjoyable read.
January 22, 2024
Wright takes after forms like haiku and styles that feel ancient, almost Biblical. He'll occasionally jog into rhyme scheme, and when he does, it feels like a witty departure from his stark, barren-winter free verse, almost like when T.S. Eliot activates an unexpected couplet or ABABAB stanza.
Wright's imagery and language feel his own as much as they are of the earth, nature, and things constantly surrounding us; it is what makes him such a strong poet, in my opinion: his ability to pull words from the air that we are familiar with, but to make them strange and profound by way of hypnotizing line breaks, knockout punctuation, and sudden reveries into worlds that float around us but that we cannot enter. He'll use the aforementioned idea of haiku as a kind of envoi. In a poem like "A Message Hidden in An Empty Wine Bottle That I Threw into A Gully of Maple Trees One Night at An Indecent Hour," (what a title) whereupon describing a witchy scene taking place in some woods, he caps the poem with three lines that could stand on their own, but also clarify what he has just written: "An owl rises / From the cutter bar / Of a hayrake." Pretty badass. Like if Cormac McCarthy wrote poetry.
The collection features iconic poems like "William Duffy's Farm" and "The Blessing," and a personal favorite of mine, "Beginning," which was in the anthology where I first encountered Wright. Happy to have dove deeper into his work. I'm feeling very inspired after reading this collection.
Sidenote: the version I read was this weird, cheaply-printed little brochure of a poetry book where all the poems were smushed together, not given individual pages, and typeset in hideous Cambria (we don't love), so I will be on the lookout in the years to come for a more resplendent edition of this collection, because while it goes to show the quality of Wright's poetry in its ability to transcend the lousy confines of this physical book, I would like to experience his writing in a more flattering physical medium, too.
Wright's imagery and language feel his own as much as they are of the earth, nature, and things constantly surrounding us; it is what makes him such a strong poet, in my opinion: his ability to pull words from the air that we are familiar with, but to make them strange and profound by way of hypnotizing line breaks, knockout punctuation, and sudden reveries into worlds that float around us but that we cannot enter. He'll use the aforementioned idea of haiku as a kind of envoi. In a poem like "A Message Hidden in An Empty Wine Bottle That I Threw into A Gully of Maple Trees One Night at An Indecent Hour," (what a title) whereupon describing a witchy scene taking place in some woods, he caps the poem with three lines that could stand on their own, but also clarify what he has just written: "An owl rises / From the cutter bar / Of a hayrake." Pretty badass. Like if Cormac McCarthy wrote poetry.
The collection features iconic poems like "William Duffy's Farm" and "The Blessing," and a personal favorite of mine, "Beginning," which was in the anthology where I first encountered Wright. Happy to have dove deeper into his work. I'm feeling very inspired after reading this collection.
Sidenote: the version I read was this weird, cheaply-printed little brochure of a poetry book where all the poems were smushed together, not given individual pages, and typeset in hideous Cambria (we don't love), so I will be on the lookout in the years to come for a more resplendent edition of this collection, because while it goes to show the quality of Wright's poetry in its ability to transcend the lousy confines of this physical book, I would like to experience his writing in a more flattering physical medium, too.
May 7, 2022
Gosh! Why did it take me so many decades to find this guy!
Simply loved it. It's beautiful. It's readable. It's human.
Here is one...no, it's got to be two...
How My Fever Left
I can still hear her.
She hobbles downstairs to the kitchen.
She is swearing at the dishes.
She slaps her grease rags
into a basket,
And slings it over her skinny forearm, crooked
With hatred, and stomps outside.
I can hear my father downstairs,
Standing without a coat in the open back door,
Calling to the old bat across the snow.
She's forgotten her black shawl,
But I see her through my window, sneering,
Flapping upward
Toward some dark church on the hill.
She has to meet somebody else, and
It's no use, she won't listen,
She's gone.
Oh! That line 'She is swearing at the dishes.'
Just so human, so real, intense, true.
And then, towards the end of the collection:
A Dream of Burial
Nothing was left of me
But my right food
And my left shoulder.
They lay white as a skein of a spider floating
In a field of snow toward a dark building
Tilted and stained by the wind.
Inside the dream, I dreamed on.
A parade of old women
Sang softly above me,
Faint mosquitoes near still water.
So I waited, in my corridor.
I listened for the sea
To call me.
I knew that, somewhere outside, the horse
Stood saddled, browsing in grass
Waiting for me.
Brilliant!
Simply loved it. It's beautiful. It's readable. It's human.
Here is one...no, it's got to be two...
How My Fever Left
I can still hear her.
She hobbles downstairs to the kitchen.
She is swearing at the dishes.
She slaps her grease rags
into a basket,
And slings it over her skinny forearm, crooked
With hatred, and stomps outside.
I can hear my father downstairs,
Standing without a coat in the open back door,
Calling to the old bat across the snow.
She's forgotten her black shawl,
But I see her through my window, sneering,
Flapping upward
Toward some dark church on the hill.
She has to meet somebody else, and
It's no use, she won't listen,
She's gone.
Oh! That line 'She is swearing at the dishes.'
Just so human, so real, intense, true.
And then, towards the end of the collection:
A Dream of Burial
Nothing was left of me
But my right food
And my left shoulder.
They lay white as a skein of a spider floating
In a field of snow toward a dark building
Tilted and stained by the wind.
Inside the dream, I dreamed on.
A parade of old women
Sang softly above me,
Faint mosquitoes near still water.
So I waited, in my corridor.
I listened for the sea
To call me.
I knew that, somewhere outside, the horse
Stood saddled, browsing in grass
Waiting for me.
Brilliant!
May 23, 2019
When I first read this some years ago I'd've said it was my favorite single book of poetry because it has 3 of my all-time favorite poems. Re-reading, I gave more attention to the many other poems in the book, that were not as striking as those 3. Doing some reading, this book was written as the author was moving from more traditional verse in rhyme & meter to free verse. He was incorporating elements of Spanish & Asian poetry into his work. It seems now that those other poems are as necessary as those I treasure. Each has their moments, each is a signpost toward the successful realization of his vision. Who knows, certainly others may have 3 other favorites in this book. (my 3 are "A Blessing," "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry," "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm")
January 4, 2019
I liked this book more than other books of poetry I've read recently. The 'voice' of the poet is tongue in cheek and he loves nature, two things that I appreciate in a writer. My favorite poems from this book were "Fear is What Quickens Me", "Two Hangovers", "Two Horses Playing in an Orchard", "Trying to Pray", "A Prayer to Escape from the Marketplace", "Today I Was Happy So I Made This Poem", "To the Evening Star: Central Minnesota", "I Was Afraid of Dying", and "A Blessing". This poet's writing reminded me of Wallace Stegner's.
February 1, 2023
How nice to revisit this book. It contains a few of the most famous poems of the latter 20th century, but overall it's just so interesting to read. Wright, before this, and sometimes after, could get a little word heavy. Surely the influence of Robert Bly and the book Silence in the Snowy Fields had a lot to do with how this particular book worked itself. Much more stripped down, but also much more striking. There are still some lines and even poems that strike me as flat out clunky, maybe outdated. But others are still, after many reads, just astonishingly beautiful.
June 18, 2018
It may be admitting my ignorance, but I didn't really understand most of this poetry. Some had rhyme and most had some structure, many portrayed an emotion somehow, but I could not understand his meaning. Was it all metaphors above my head? Having read it all in one sitting aloud and alone, I began to enjoy it more, but understanding still the same. I would love an intellectual discussion group to dissect it and debate possible meanings.
March 29, 2021
Initially, I bought this book because it contains “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”, which is one of the single greatest poems ever written in English. But the rest of this collection is every bit as affecting and nuanced. The poems hum with the labor of life and the effortlessness of nature and how the two collide, always. Intensely recommended.
March 18, 2023
In my option, poetry should bring out the magical from the mundane - masterfully and beautifully pull you out of one level of existence and elevate you into quite another, magical one.
That is what James Wright does: from how my fever left - one of my favorite poems of all time - to the one about a disappointing book of poetry so I invite the insects to join me, he turns a moment to magic.
This is poetry at its pinnacle. I read this book about every 8 months or so… and I pull it out or search a poem online from him even more often.
I’m sure most people have heard of James Wright, but if you haven’t… this man is the big cheese… and that’s what a VEGAN has to say!😄
That is what James Wright does: from how my fever left - one of my favorite poems of all time - to the one about a disappointing book of poetry so I invite the insects to join me, he turns a moment to magic.
This is poetry at its pinnacle. I read this book about every 8 months or so… and I pull it out or search a poem online from him even more often.
I’m sure most people have heard of James Wright, but if you haven’t… this man is the big cheese… and that’s what a VEGAN has to say!😄
July 8, 2019
The Jewel
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Two Hangovers - number two
Trying to Pray
A Prayer to Escape from the Marketplace
A Blessing
Milkweed
A Dream of Burial
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Two Hangovers - number two
Trying to Pray
A Prayer to Escape from the Marketplace
A Blessing
Milkweed
A Dream of Burial
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