Wright, James (1927-1980), was a leading American poet whose work explored varieties of social isolation, despair, and death. He received the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his Collected Poems (1971). The collection includes most of The Green Wall (1957), his first book of poems, and three later collections, along with translations and 33 new poems.
Stylistically, Wright went through an evolution. His early works feature regular meter, an emphasis on rhetoric, and the strong use of rhymes. His later work became more natural, abandoning rhyme and moving toward a plainer, almost conversational style. Throughout his work, however, Wright concentrated on themes of loneliness and alienation. He often wrote of separation, either the separation brought on by death or the separation of the outsider from society.
All of Wright’s poetry was collected in Above the River: The Complete Poems (published in 1990, after his death). His Complete Prose was published in 1983, after his death. Wright also was an accomplished translator of works by Spanish-language poets Pablo Neruda and César Vallejo and German-language poets Hermann Hesse, Theodor Storm, and Georg Trakl.
James Arlington Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio. He graduated from Kenyon College in 1952 and received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Washington in 1954 and 1959. He taught at the University of Minnesota from 1957 to 1964, Macalester College from 1963 to 1965, and Hunter College from 1966 until his death. Franz Wright, his son, won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
