James Wright: I have come a long way to surrender my shadow

Abstract

Wright's poetry is often classified as traditional, surrealistic, confessional, or emotive, and these categories often emphasize style over thematic concerns. Stylistically, the poet did move in many directions, but this forward movement was a direct result of Wright's effort to understand the meaning of his own existence. A writer is obligated, he believed, to keep the language in close contact with reality. Wright's stumbling on a way of writing during one period to find himself changing direction during another period demonstrates his imaginative courage to understand the meaning of his own life. His own shortsightedness, arrogance, and impatience, he found, often blinded him. What we need, he discovered, is devoutness: the grace to understand that nature, outcasts, women and all things on this earth exist for reasons of their own. Love, a supreme risk that requires a simultaneous turning toward self and society, enabled him to subordinate his claims to the claims of the world around him. For Wright, love effects an overwhelmingly difficult act of self-knowledge.