James Wright

Chard deNiord (Providence College)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 13 Dec 1927
Died 25 Mar 1980
Activity 1947-1980

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Poet

Other

Scholar
Teacher/ Professor

Resources

Wright's Works

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As both an exile and witness to the poverty of his native Martins Ferry, Ohio, James Arlington Wright escaped the harsh fate of his parents and peers to become one of the leading poets of his generation. With deep affection for his hometown, Wright remained haunted throughout his career by the suffering of his townspeople, including his father, Dudley, who was an employee of the Hazel-Atlas Glass factory, and his mother, Jesse Lyons Wright, who worked as a laundress. Influenced initially by the narrative, iambic style and demotic subject matter of Edwin Arlington Robinson and Robert Frost before turning to free verse and the more spare, imagistic strategies of the European Modernists and classical Chinese poets, Wright created transpersonal arcs between his speakers and his subjects that…

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3561 words

Citation: deNiord, Chard. "James Wright". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 May 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4809, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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