"Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" is written in free verse, an open style that is non-syllabic and non-rhyming. If we count the poem's line syllables or even the number of lines themselves, there appears to be complete randomness in its construction: five lines in the first verse, three in the second, and four in the third and syllable totals for each line that amount to 9, 13, 15, 11, 5, 11, 8, 4, 2, 11, 9, and 13, respectively. If, though, traditional form does not hold the poem together, the imagery and the placement of particular words most surely provide its cohesion.

Prior to The Branch Will Not Break, the book in which "Autumn Begins" first appeared, James Wright wrote mostly in very stylized verse, patterning his work after the likes of Robert Frost and E.A. Robinson, as well as the crafted seventeenth-century poets Ben Johnson and John Donne. With his new book, however, Wright relaxed the form...