The Wright Stuff

It's the birthday of poet James (Arlington) Wright, (books by this author) born in Martin's Ferry, Ohio (1927). Wright's whole youth was aimed at leaving his small hometown. His father worked at the same glass factory for fifty years, and his mother left school at fourteen to work in a laundry. Neither went to school past the eighth grade. He was the middle of three sons.

He started writing poetry when he was eleven, when a friend tried to teach him Latin and also gave him a copy of the collected works of Lord Byron.

The Writer's Almanac for today reveals that it's the birthday of James Wright.  I want to say something about Wright.  I did not know Wright's work until I came to Ohio in 1987 to study fiction writing in the MFA program at Bowling Green State University, where I now teach. 

Our MFA program has 10 fiction writers and 10 poets.  It's a two year program, and the participants are staggered:  that is, in any year, you have new workshoppers mixing with the old.  One of the new poets (at the same time that I was a second-year fiction writer),Denver Butson, wrote a poem about James Wright that I found to be so powerful that I asked Denver for a copy of it.  "Sign it, please," I said, and he did sign and date his poem for me. Denver has since published many poems.

Denver's poem made me want to read Wright's poems.  At some point, I bought Wright's complete poems, Above the River.  After I graduated from the MFA program, I lost my way as a writer for a time.  It was Wright's poetry that helped me to find my way back to writing again. 

The advice I would give people who want to write is so simple:  read.  Find writers who speak to you and read their work.  Find the time to read it.  Even if it's just a few minutes a  day, say when you first get up in the morning.  Let the writer's words stay with you through the day.

Explore what the writers you love loved to read themselves.  And read what they loved.

Wright was an extraordinary writer, but he never felt his work was extraordinary.  When his first book of poems won a Pulitzer Prize, he said he didn't think he deserved the recognition. He said:  "It'll fade, and I'll be a footnote in some high-school anthology." He also said, "I didn't believe it; I thought I didn't deserve it. I still don't think I deserve it." 

Oh but how his words did speak to me when I needed them most.

I include here an excerpt from his poem, "On the Skeleton of a Hound":

                                                I alone

Scatter this hulk about the dampened ground,

And while the moon rises beyond me, throw

The ribs and spine out of their perfect shape.

For a last charm to the dead, I lift the skull

And toss it over the maples like a ball.

Strewn to the woods, now may that spirit sleep

That flamed over the ground a year ago.

I know the mole will heave a shinbone over,

The earthworm snuggle for a nap on paws,

The honest bees built honey in the head;

The earth knows how to handle the great dead

Who lived the body out, and broke its laws,

Knocked down a fence, tore up a field of clover.