SOURCE: “Beyond the Middle Style,” in James Wright: The Heart of the Light, edited by Peter Stitt and Frank Graziano, The University of Michigan Press, 1990, pp. 141-43.

In the following excerpt, Hartman, while maintaining Wright's hold on his poetic talent, judges The Branch Will Not Break to be only a sketch book, and the free verse poems in it to be “straining for relaxation.”

The spirit of Thoreau is abroad again. It is, on the whole, a benificent spirit, kindly disposed to heifers and horses, and dangerous only to moralizers. “The moral aspect of nature,” we read in Thoreau's Journals, “is a jaundice reflected from man.” And, “Farewell, dear heifer! … There was a whole bucolic in her snuff. … And as she took the apple from my hand, I caught the apple of her eye. She smelled as sweet as the clethra blossom.” Something has driven that mood out...