SOURCE: J.E. Palmer, “The Poetry of James Wright: A First Collection,” in James Wright: The Heart of the Light, edited by Peter Stitt and Frank Graziano, The University of Michigan Press, 1990, pp. 26-33.

In the following essay, first published in 1957, Palmer reviews Wright's first collection of poetry and characterizes him as a “mature and accomplished poet.”

From its occasional appearance in such journals as the Sewanee Review the poetry of James Wright was beginning to be known and respected before the publication of this first collection [The Green Wall]. Now with these forty poems brought together our hopeful notions are confirmed—as for instance with such other first collections as Robert Lowell's Land of Unlikeness and Richard Wilbur's The Beautiful Changes: here is one of the elect, a young poet of great gifts by whose labors the living body of poetry will be sustained.

Whatever of the...