SOURCE: “The Reconciled Vision of James Wright,” in The Literary Review, Vol. 28, No. 1, Fall, 1984, pp. 77-92.

In the following essay, Stiffler argues that Wright's main goal in his poetry was to reconcile “the possibility of epiphany with the reality of despair.”

I

In 1958, James Wright received the following words of advice from his former teacher, Theodore Roethke:

Now to you. I hope you won't take it amiss: I worry, I worry my can off, practically. And I've spent nearly the whole of three sessions with my doctor yacking about you. Apparently you're more of an emotional symbol to me than I realized: a combination of student-young brother—something like that. (I even shed a tear or two.)

But the chief point now, as I see it, is you. I've been through all this before, through the wringer, bud, so please respect my advice. Once you become too hyper-active...