Stephen Dobyns: The Poetic Development of James Wright (July 2013)

The lecture looks at the change in James Wright’s poetry from the formal verse of The Green Wall and Saint Judas through the free verse poetry of The Branch Will Not Break, focusing on Wrights’ early years in Martins Ferry, Ohio, through his time in the army, Kenyon College and his year in Vienna on a Fulbright where he discovered the poetry of Georg Trakl, which showed him a path his own poetry could take and led a few years later with his friendship with Robert Bly. Biographical information is drawn from letters and six interviews with Wright.