A Wild Perfection The Selected letters of James Wright

by Anne (ed.) WRIGHT

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. The Great Conversation 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry

Hardcover

First published August 17, 2005

Reviews

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bigger book than "Selected" may lead you to believe. I read it slowly, but with pleasure. Even Devotion.

Wright had good friends who went on to write many good, even great poems, and shaped the time they wrote in. Perhaps that influence has diminished a bit in the last couple of decades, but Wright's example is still there.

Wright was devoted to the art, both as reader and writer. For him, it was a major art, THE major art. Even though I've never read these letters before, some were famous enough to drift into my knowledge indirectly -- there's the famous letter he wrote to Robert Bly after reading the first issue of Bly's journal, "The Fifties;" there is the famous meeting with Bill Knott in Chicago; there are the letters where he dismissed his own book, "Two Citizens," after his friends and most of the critics turned against it (although this book remains very important to me and one I return to often); there are the letters later in his life where he says he won't do anymore public readings and how much he dislikes them (which is why I've heard all of his friends read but never had the chance to hear him); and there is the moment when he is discovering his own approach to his "prose pieces," which became so influential, even to me.

And there is Wright's generosity on display, not only to the young writers he corresponded with. For instance, I didn't know he thought so highly of Gary Snyder and his work. Of course, it's not surprising given Snyder's work, but it is surprising given the provincialism of different types of American poetry. Rexroth, too.

I've read the big biography of Wright, and knew where this was going, but there was no mention of his illness, his cancer, until the very end of the book. I was moved.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous.