Wright, James

Wright, James, 1927–80, American poet, b. Ohio. He studied at Kenyon College and the Univ. of Washington. Wright was the master of an elegant, beautifully controlled style. His early poems contained surrealistic juxtapositions; later works abandoned willed complexity in favor of a plainer diction. His collections include The Green Wall (1957), Shall We Gather at the River? (1968), Collected Poems (1971, Pulitzer Prize), To a Blossoming Pear Tree (1977), and the posthumous volumes This Journey (1982), The Shape of Light (1986), and Above the River: The Complete Poems (1990). He also translated Latin American, European, and Chinese poetry.

See his collected prose, ed. A. Wright (1982); biography by J. Blunk (2017).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: American Literature: Biographies