SOURCE: “From ‘The Anguish of the Spirit and the Letter,”’ in The Hudson Review, Vol. XII, No. 4, Winter, 1959-60, pp. 46-48.

In the following essay, Hecht praises Wright for his success at integrating “event and commentary” in “a poetry of wisdom.”

James Wright is a gifted young poet who is trying to write the most difficult kind of poetry: the poetry of wisdom. He has said of his new book [St. Judas]: “I have tried to shape these poems, singly and as a group, in order to ask some moral questions: Exactly what is a good and humane action? And, even if one knows what such an action is, then exactly why should he perform it?” This is an ambitious program, though one would suppose it was an unlikely way to go about composing a poem. But Mr. Wright is very nearly as good as his word, and...