Selected Poems - Softcover

Wright, James; Wright, Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374529027 ISBN 13: 9780374529024

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

Synopsis

The first selected poems of a major poet who "wrote with more heart than any other North American poet of the twentieth century" (Rodney Jones, Parnassus)

More than any other poet of his generation, James Wright spoke to the great sadness and hope that are inextricable from the iconography of America: its rail yards, rivers, cities, and once vast natural beauty. Speaking in the unique lyrical voice that he called his "Ohioan," Wright created poems of immense sympathy for sociey's alienated and outcast figures and also of ardent wonder at the restorative power of nature.

Selected Poems fills a significant gap in Wright's bibliography: that of an accessible, carefully chosen collection to satisfy both longtime readers and those just discovering his work. Edited and with an introduction by Wright's widow, Anne, and his close friend the poet Robert Bly, who also wrote an introduction, Selected Poems is a personal, deeply considered collection of work with pieces chosen from all of Wright's books. It is an overdue--and timely--new view of a poet whose life and work encompassed the extremes of American life.

About this title

About the Authors

Poetry collections by James Wright (1927-80) include The Green Wall (1957), which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award, Saint Judas (1959), The Branch Will Not Break (1963), Shall We Gather at the River (1968), and Two Citizens (1973). Wright was elected a fellow of The Academy of American Poets in 1971, and the following year his Collected Poems received the Pulitzer Prize. He died in New York City in 1980, having served on the English faculties at the University of Minnesota, Macalester College, and Hunter College (CUNY).

Robert Bly (1926-2021) was an American poet, author, activist, translator, and leader of the mythopoetic men’s movement. His book Iron John: A Book About Men was a key text of the movement, and spent 62 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He won the 1968 National Book Award for poetry for his book The Light Around the Body, and was named Minnesota’s first poet laureate in 2008. He also received the Maurice English Poetry Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement.

Bly’s other poetic works include More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales, Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, and Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950-2013.

Anne Wright, wife of James Wright (1927-80) edited Wild Perfection and Selected Poems.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374529027
• ISBN 13: 9780374529024
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176