Biography Essay

Often remembered as one of the strongest of post-World War II American poets, James Wright was one of a group of young writers who, after establishing themselves with early books of prosodically conservative poetry, broke away from the mainstream traditions to experiment with looser form, freer rhythms, and bolder images. The verse in Wright's first two books, The Green Wall (1957) and Saint Judas (1959), is characterized by its use of traditional forms and shows the influence of such established poets as Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson. Much of Wright's middle verse, however, features the use of what some critics, using Robert Kelly's term of 1961, have called deep imagery. A subjective imagery that is purportedly drawn from a poet's unconscious, such imagery was used in this period in a reaction to what Wright considered the too analytical, too cerebral, perhaps spiritually enervated poetry that he and his...