SOURCE: “This Is What I Wanted: James Wright and the Other World,” in Modern Poetry Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1-2, 1982, pp. 19-32.

In the following essay, Lense argues that Wright perceives the spirit of “the other world,” whether pastoral or painful, embedded in the common elements of this one.

James Wright is not generally thought of as a visionary poet. The imagery of his poems has always been grounded in matter-of-fact realities, whether the plains and white houses of the Midwest in his earlier books or, more recently, factories and large cities. The poems are almost weighed down by physical details: Wright is careful to tell his readers which hand he uses to stroke a horse, what kind of tree he is standing under while he looks at a field. Nonetheless, in many of his best poems he is equally preoccupied with the spiritual world behind appearance; his best...