Customer Reviews

Above the River: The Complete Poems

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Both straightforward and evocative, James Wright's poetry is concerned with life's minutae and immense mystery. Combining a rural eye for the country with a critical intellect, many of his poems flirt with the central polarity of existence and death, particularly of the spirit, which he saw often in the blue collar world of his youth. Wright's poems find redemption through immersion in all of its aspects, much like the whores of Wheeling, West Virginia emerging from the Ohio River "drying their wings". The hopeless struggle for meaning and value imbue life with just those qualities, as he writes in 'Small Frogs Killed on the Highway': Still/I would leap too/Into the light/If I had the chance.

I recommend that you leap into the light for this book of poems. It is an important collection of poetry for anyone interested in post-war American poetry or American poetry in general.

This collection of Wright's work includes his experiments with formal blank verse, translations of German poets, experimental prose pieces, and characteristic free verse that made him one of America's strongest national poets with a regional identity. Wright's topics range from the pastoral landscape of people, wildlife, and industry near his Ohio hometown to the philosophical challenges of individuality, death, renewal, and union. The gray mountains, coal trains, steel bridges and murky Ohio River take their places beside docile horses, musical insects and colorful characters. But never does Wright falter to the mere reporting of a landscape through his poetry; the vision is always fresh, exacting, tense, and redemptive. I have used his work with many of my English students, and the feedback is celebratory. If you are a fan of poetry or a student of the craft, familiarize yourself with this book. Donald Hall's wonderful preface does justice to one of America's most fondly remembered poets.

James Wright's mastery of the traditional formal elements of poetry coupled with his contemporary and timeless themes makes his collection of poetry one of the best I have ever read. The first reading of his works leaves the reader wondering. The second brings comprehension. The third and any subsequent readings mesmerize as Wright's web of imagery and contemplation becomes more intricate. It is a shame that more readers do not know of his fascinating works.

I hate to give this work anything less than 5-stars, because at the moment (and probably most future moments) I revere James Wright's poetry. He makes blue collar blackened river Ohio come alive riven death with darkness and life. So this book is a must for poetry lovers.

Where it distracts me is the attempts at completeness is a difficult editor's dilemma and one that doesn't serve the poet or the poet's reader well here. There are two James Wright's out there (this book presents three), as is true with most sublimated artist that pass through a learning phase before hitting on their voice, their style.

James Wright started as a formalist (not my favored style) hailing structure and rhyme sometimes at the expense of meaning and language (disclaimer...one man's humble opinion belies a personal taste and no two taste buds seem the same). The book of course being a complete work, offers all of those poems of bandied prose. And then the editor offers a bridge or break of sorts in Wright's translated works of German and Spanish poets. Wright was a great poet in English, but the gift of gifted translation should have been left to the likes of W.S. Merwin, Anthony Kerrigan, Charles Tomlinson, and Stephen Mitchell for Neruda, Paz, and Rilke.

So, Wright's "Above the River," really first breaks the surface on page 119 after his epiphany to all thing free form. It is then that his poetry sings darkly. I leave you with some of Wright's beautiful language (there's plenty to be had). Buy the book for the rest.

In Fear of Harvests

It has happened
Before: nearby,
The nostrils of slow horses
Breathe evenly,
And the brown bees drag their high garlands,
Heavily,
Toward hives of snow.

This volume is fascinating, because it does show the different stages of Wright's development as a poet and a writer (the prose sketches and descriptions of Italy are wonderful).

The early poems are extremely capable but there is a sense in which they feel constrained by formal verse conventions, especially rhyme. This becomes evident when he writes in free verse and his voice becomes easier and more vernacular. Some of the poems like "Hook" and "To A Blossoming Pear Tree" are wonderful:

'An old man / Appeared to me once / In the unendurable snow./ He had singe of white beard on his face. / He paused on a strett on Minneapolis / And stroked my face. // Give it to me, he begged / I'll pay you anything. // I flinched. Both terrified, / We slunk away, / Each in his own way dodging / The cruel darts of the cold. "

There are some late poems when he becomes almost incoherent, but the centre of the book is a whole series of poems as powerful and honest as this.

James Wright is a terrific, though not well known, American poet of the 1950's and 60's. Along with Robert Bly and William Duffey, Wright helped to open a new page in modern poetry which encouraged writers to break from the restrictions of traditional British formats. Personal and reflective, the poems focus on nature and have a strong touch of influence from ancient Chinese poets. Though the collection is filled with great stuff, my favorite is "Northern Pike."

James Wright was of course one of the 20th century's great master poets. Each poem in this book bears his stamp of completely precise, beautiful communication. His writing can teach about the art. It does, though, seem kind of pretentious to me the way this one approach to poetry, which has its sense in it, is the only way for the words to be poetry, which James Wright must have believed or he wouldn't have done it that same way every time.

James Wright was of course one of the 20th century's great master poets. Each poem in this book bears his stamp of completely precise, beautiful communication. His writing can teach about the art. It does, though, seem kind of pretentious to me the way this one approach to poetry, which has its sense in it, is the only way for the words to be poetry, which James Wright must have believed or he wouldn't have done it that same way every time. Allegedly, his writing got experimental by his third book, but it didn't change THAT much.