[New-Poetry] From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright

[David Graham]

I do wonder about James Wright's "continuing stature."  Are there  
really a lot of twenty-something poets eagerly lapping up his work as  
poets of my generation did 30 years back?

Interesting discussion on Robert Peake's blog, between him & Joe  
Duemer, about James Wright's work & in particular whether it's  
crippled by sentimentality.

I've had an experience similar to Joe D's--having love love loved  
Wright's work when I was starting out, I came to find him harder to  
read as I got older.  Reading over his collected poems with a student  
a few years back as part of an independent study project, I was  
surprised how many poems I found unreadably weak.  Ultimately, I  
think a lot of his poems have not aged well at all, though I still  
have great fondness for many of them.  And he's got his share of good  
ones lodged where they'll be hard to get rid of, of course.  Just not  
as many as I'd once thought.

Here's their blog discussion--

http://www.robertpeake.com/archives/358-James-Wright,-On-Having-My- 
Pocket-Picked-In-Rome.html

========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
==========================================



On Nov 15, 2007, at 9:52 AM, jforjames at aol.com wrote:

> From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright
> -- 
> Title: From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright
> Contributor: Bruce Henricksen (Editor)
> Robert Johnson (Editor)
> Publication Date: February 2008
> Publisher: Lost Hills Books
>  http://www.losthillsbooks.com/
> Country of Publication: United States
> Market: United States
> ISBN: 0-9798535-1-6
> ISBN 13: 978-0-9798535-1-7
> Item Status: Active Record
> Binding Format: Perfect
> Pages: 84
> Price: $14.75(USD) Invoice (Publisher)
>
> Synopsis/Annotation: From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James  
> Wright brings together elegies written by many of Wright's most  
> important contemporaries, including Robert Bly, Galway Kinnell,  
> W.S. Merwin, and C.K Williams. Interspersed with these are poems by  
> a newer generation of writers inspired by Wright. This unique  
> collection attests to the continuing stature of James Wright on the  
> American literary landscape.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20071115/0bb2d982/attachment.html