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Above the River: The Complete Poems
One of the most admired American poets of his generation, James Wright (1927-80) wrote contemplative, sturdy, and generous poems with an honesty, clarity, and stylistic range matched by very few--then or now. From his Deep Image-inspired lyrics to his Whtimanesque renderings of Neruda, Vallejo, and other Latin American poets, and from his heartfelt reflections on life, love, and loss in his native Ohio to the celebrated prose poems (set frequently in Italy) that marked the end of his important career, Above the River gathers the complete work of a modern master. It also features a moving and insightful introduction by Donald Hall, Wright's longtime friend and colleague.
432 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1990
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About the author
James Wright
506 books104 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
On December 13, 1927, James Arlington Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio. His father worked for fifty years at a glass factory, and his mother left school at fourteen to work in a laundry; neither attended school beyond the eighth grade. While in high school in 1943 Wright suffered a nervous breakdown and missed a year of school. When he graduated in 1946, a year late, he joined the army and was stationed in Japan during the American occupation. He then attended Kenyon College on the G.I. Bill, and studied under John Crowe Ransom. He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1952, then married another Martins Ferry native, Liberty Kardules. The two traveled to Austria, where, on a Fulbright Fellowship, Wright studied the works of Theodor Storm and Georg Trakl at the University of Vienna. He returned to the U.S. and earned master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Washington, studying with Theodore Roethke and Stanley Kunitz. He went on to teach at The University of Minnesota, Macalester College, and New York City's Hunter College.
On December 13, 1927, James Arlington Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio. His father worked for fifty years at a glass factory, and his mother left school at fourteen to work in a laundry; neither attended school beyond the eighth grade. While in high school in 1943 Wright suffered a nervous breakdown and missed a year of school. When he graduated in 1946, a year late, he joined the army and was stationed in Japan during the American occupation. He then attended Kenyon College on the G.I. Bill, and studied under John Crowe Ransom. He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1952, then married another Martins Ferry native, Liberty Kardules. The two traveled to Austria, where, on a Fulbright Fellowship, Wright studied the works of Theodor Storm and Georg Trakl at the University of Vienna. He returned to the U.S. and earned master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Washington, studying with Theodore Roethke and Stanley Kunitz. He went on to teach at The University of Minnesota, Macalester College, and New York City's Hunter College.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
February 21, 2014
Read Shall We Gather at the River, an outstanding work of black brooding and mortal obsession. Considered by many--Robert Bly among them--to be a seminal work of twentieth-century American poetry. It's one of six or seven volumes collected here from Wright's too-brief career.
Oh the voice lovelier was
Than a crow's dreaming face,
His secret face, that smiles
Alive in a dead place.
Oh I was lonely, lonely:
What were the not to me?
The not were nothing then.
Now let the not become
Nothing, and so remain,
Till the bright grass birds come
Home to the singing tree.
Then, let them be.
(From "For the Marsh's Birthday")
March 16, 2011
True greatness. Wright was not unlike Picasso, a master (in poetry, as opposed to painting) whose true genius became evident only when he freed himself from the constraints of form and broke new emotional and linguistic ground in free verse. This is a book to treasure and re-visit again and again.
November 12, 2015
When he gets it right, as he often does, James Wright is among the finest of American poets. Hugely intelligent, lyrical, and unsentimentally touching his best poems are among the very best of the 20th Century. This book presents the work of his lifetime and as such includes his lesser work. Even so, it ranks among my six or seven favorite volumes of poetry. Wright is a hugely underrated Midwestern genius. Time spent reading him is time well spent indeed.
August 19, 2008
One of the best poems --
A Winter Day in Ohio
PWT died in late Spring, 1957
Clever, defensive, seasoned animals
Plato and Christ deny your grave. But man,
Who slept for years alone, will turn his face
Alone to the common wall before his time.
Between the woodchuck and the cross, alone
All afternoon, I take my time to mourn.
I am too old to cry against the snow
Of roots and stars, drifting above your face.
A Winter Day in Ohio
PWT died in late Spring, 1957
Clever, defensive, seasoned animals
Plato and Christ deny your grave. But man,
Who slept for years alone, will turn his face
Alone to the common wall before his time.
Between the woodchuck and the cross, alone
All afternoon, I take my time to mourn.
I am too old to cry against the snow
Of roots and stars, drifting above your face.
July 5, 2007
James Wright and Richard Hugo are my favorite poets, so you read poems by them, and then we can start a gang
December 9, 2010
Wonderful book. Lyrical, gritty, moving. Wright's poetry is deeply personal, yet universal, a sort of every man's struggle to find himself. We follow him from his Ohio blue collar roots all the way to Italy where he for the first time, finds a sort of peace (having much to do with his marriage to Anne Wright) that had eluded him for the greater part of his life. This collection was put together by his wife, Anne Wright and contains a thoughtful foreword by Donald Hall. It also includes prose written by Wright later in his life. This book is one of the few collected works I have read cover to cover and had difficulty putting down. His unforgettable style is best shown in his own words: "Suddenly I realize/That if I stepped out of my body I would break/Into blossom." Must read for poets.
August 16, 2007
much of james wright's work alternates between elation at the beauty of the natural world and depression resulting from the ugliness of the human world. i can relate all too much to this bipolar cycling, but i read his work not so much for the full cycle but for the elation, for the beauty, for his identification with the small things, and for the feeling of breaking open with the blossoming of the world.
September 9, 2012
James Wright is a perfect poet for lush descriptions, celebration of the socially forgotten, and killer ending lines. In the forward, Donald Hall says that Wright's poems are weaker when they try to be pretty but masterful when they are beautiful. I would have to agree. This collection has many of both, but overall it reflects a man who lived close to the vein and was honest, witty, and real in his work and in his life.
February 2, 2009
If only all the poems could have been in Ohio. Lord, when the man makes even the slightest allusion to his home, the poem is immediately grounded. And textured. Otherwise, well, watching the colorized version of Ted Turner classics I get the idea what the movie is about, and what it must mean. But I just can't quite settle into everything.
November 16, 2010
How can you not love Wright's poetry? He gives us everything a poem should be-- he says what most of us cannot express in words-- and he's hopeful.
June 21, 2018
Rapidly, and especially because of this collection, James Wright has become one of my favorite poets, if not the poet I currently want to most emulate. Refined, raw, brilliant, formal, structured, free, and dripping with natural imagery and reverence. A splendid (tragic) poet with much to offer us through his many decades of poetic creation.
August 31, 2016
One of my favorite poets. This is a good volume if you want everything Wright every published, but if you don't then you may want to stick to "selected poems" or start with "The Branch Will Not Break".
June 3, 2009
James Wright is one of my favorite poets. His poems are both spare and haunting. He is a master at conveying worlds of feeling in a few lines as in his poems "The Jewel" and "A Blessing". His work is accessible and allows for a real communication with the reader.
November 24, 2011
The fact is, like all complete poems, there are some bad poems in this collection--but our ability to see the body of work of this American master is worthwhile. We can see him develop as a poet, and watch him hone his skills to mastery.
February 7, 2019
A great academic poet who is much more than an academic poet, James Wright lives within a community of structurally gifted and emotionally deep poets. I read him with pleasure savoring poems as I go and celebrating fine lines.
August 27, 2007
It's just James Wright... all of his poems. They are generous, a human spirit always breaking but never broken.
September 28, 2008
I never finished this volume but there are some AMAZING poems in here that I already love...so I intend to!
March 30, 2008
This is beautiful poetry but Farrar, Strauss and Giroux went real low-budgie on the book. Some smarter publisher should put together a better printing, better paper, clearer font, etc. What a bummer.
March 10, 2008
I keep coming back to this and it is richer every time. Boldly I say, I think Wright may be the greatest poet of the 20th century.
July 1, 2008
The James Wright Poetry Festival in Martin's Ferry, Ohio is where I first fell in love with my wife.
His voice winds those hills like the river.
His voice winds those hills like the river.
May 9, 2011
Great collection of Wright. This collection (a mix of poems from earlier published Wright) was great. A good reader for a first time Wright reader or an old lover.
April 28, 2022
depressing in a good cry sort of way and at the end it cheers up. Hooray!!
December 15, 2008
Sipped from this book--breathtaking in parts though sometimes the formal feel tends toward the sentimental; JW seems to write with tears always welling up (maybe that's my attraction!):
from "Spring Images":
Two athletes
Are dancing in the cathedral
Of the wind.
A butterfly lights on the branch
Of your green voice.
Small antelopes
Fall asleep in the ashes
Of the moon.
from "Spring Images":
Two athletes
Are dancing in the cathedral
Of the wind.
A butterfly lights on the branch
Of your green voice.
Small antelopes
Fall asleep in the ashes
Of the moon.
May 13, 2010
"Two haunches of whales / Slope into whitecap doves, / It is hard to drown here. // Between two walls, / A fold of echoes, / A girl's voice walks naked. // I step into the water / Of two flakes. / The crowns of white birds rise / To my ankles, / To my knees, / To my face."
an excerpt from, "Snowstorm in the Midwest"
an excerpt from, "Snowstorm in the Midwest"
July 3, 2011
James Wright can punch you in the stomach with his wonderful (albeit depressing) descriptions of life (especially life in Ohio). The guy was almost too good.
February 20, 2017
Ive read some good poems by him, however most of these depend mostly on allusions, and are not as original.
August 19, 2017
"The Blessing" is one of my all-time favorite poems. All of Wright's works are collected in this one volume.
July 31, 2008
My favorite poet.
April 24, 2023
Against Surrealism
There are some tiny obvious details in human life that survive the divine purpose of boring fools to death. In France, all the way down south in Avallon, people like to eat cake. The local bakers there spin up a little flour and chocolate into the shape of a penguin. We came back again and again to a certain window to admire a flock of them. But we never bought one.
We found ourselves wandering through Italy, homesick for penguins.
Then a terrible and savage fire of the dog-days roared all over the fourteenth Arondissement: which is to say it was August: and three chocolate penguins appeared behind a window near Place Denfert-Rochereau. We were afraid the Parisians would recognize them, so we bought them all and snuck them home under cover.
We set them out on a small table above half the rooftops of Paris. I reached out to brush a tiny obvious particle of dust from the tip of a beak. Suddenly the dust dropped an inch and hovered there. Then it rose to the beak again.
It was a blue spider.
If I were a blue spider, I would certainly ride on a train all the way from Avallon to Paris, and I would set up my house on the nose of a chocolate penguin. It’s just a matter of common sense.
JAMES WRIGHT
Against Surrealism was my first exposure to James Wright. I loved the playfulness of the piece and looked forward to getting to know the author. Based solely on it, I purchased Above the River: The Complete Poems. I was mostly disappointed! I didn't think this prose/poem was even in the book, but finally it turned up on page 336.
The book includes both prose and poetry; I like the prose better. "The Lambs on the Boulder" is a prose piece I liked. "Bari, Old and Young" is another. "A First Day in Paris" is yet another. And "The Sunlight Falling at Peace in Moret-sur-Loing." The best prose creates a mood; see "The Silent Angel." I could keep on listing them but what I learned is that I love much of James Wright's poetry-inspired prose and get little from his poetry.
The very last section of the book, titled This Journey, was not bad. In that section, the prose and poetry are nearly indistinguishable. Perhaps that was the secret for James Wright.
When I read James Wright's poetry, especially his early poetry, I feel like I'm reading the words of a man who cannot wait to die!
My advice is read the prose; skip the poetry. Or, better yet, skip the book.
There are some tiny obvious details in human life that survive the divine purpose of boring fools to death. In France, all the way down south in Avallon, people like to eat cake. The local bakers there spin up a little flour and chocolate into the shape of a penguin. We came back again and again to a certain window to admire a flock of them. But we never bought one.
We found ourselves wandering through Italy, homesick for penguins.
Then a terrible and savage fire of the dog-days roared all over the fourteenth Arondissement: which is to say it was August: and three chocolate penguins appeared behind a window near Place Denfert-Rochereau. We were afraid the Parisians would recognize them, so we bought them all and snuck them home under cover.
We set them out on a small table above half the rooftops of Paris. I reached out to brush a tiny obvious particle of dust from the tip of a beak. Suddenly the dust dropped an inch and hovered there. Then it rose to the beak again.
It was a blue spider.
If I were a blue spider, I would certainly ride on a train all the way from Avallon to Paris, and I would set up my house on the nose of a chocolate penguin. It’s just a matter of common sense.
JAMES WRIGHT
Against Surrealism was my first exposure to James Wright. I loved the playfulness of the piece and looked forward to getting to know the author. Based solely on it, I purchased Above the River: The Complete Poems. I was mostly disappointed! I didn't think this prose/poem was even in the book, but finally it turned up on page 336.
The book includes both prose and poetry; I like the prose better. "The Lambs on the Boulder" is a prose piece I liked. "Bari, Old and Young" is another. "A First Day in Paris" is yet another. And "The Sunlight Falling at Peace in Moret-sur-Loing." The best prose creates a mood; see "The Silent Angel." I could keep on listing them but what I learned is that I love much of James Wright's poetry-inspired prose and get little from his poetry.
The very last section of the book, titled This Journey, was not bad. In that section, the prose and poetry are nearly indistinguishable. Perhaps that was the secret for James Wright.
When I read James Wright's poetry, especially his early poetry, I feel like I'm reading the words of a man who cannot wait to die!
My advice is read the prose; skip the poetry. Or, better yet, skip the book.
September 27, 2023
Above the River: The Complete Poems by James Wright is a collection of poems that span life's ups and downs. Wright makes the mundane poetic with some beautiful turns of phrase. Above the River includes poems that are immersive and approachable as well as poems that feel just beyond reach in a way that made me reach for them. Wright's poems often feel incredibly personal and other times just as impersonal. At times, it was hard to discern the truly personal from Wright's observations of other people's lives. A group of translations in the middle of the book were interesting but still my least favorite part of the book. Some of the prose pieces in the latter part of the book left me wanting more and others were a struggle to get through. I was initially drawn to Wright's work because of Wright's connection to the Ohio River because I grew up on the Kentucky side of the Ohio not too far from the river, and was thrilled to see poems about the region as well as reaching well beyond. Above the River is a worthwhile collection of poetry to read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews