James Wright: A Life in Poetry Reviewed

At the Star Tribune, Mark Gustafson takes a look into Jonathan Blunk's recent biography of poet James Wright. Gustafson makes note of Wright's most anthologized poems, including "A Blessing," "Milkweed," and "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota," while focusing on the poet's troubled life that was marked by mental illness. Ultimately, Gustafson finds Blunks biography "shows considerable empathy for his subject, and his sensitivity to the poetry shines through this long and detailed work. But be forewarned: It is a sad, even tragic, story." More from there:

Born and raised in the industrial Ohio Valley, Wright went to Kenyon College after serving in the Navy. Following a Fulbright year in Vienna, he enrolled at the University of Washington, writing his Ph.D. dissertation on Charles Dickens. He spent eight years in the Twin Cities, teaching at the University of Minnesota and then Macalester College, before moving in 1966 to Hunter College in New York. He died in 1980, just 52 years old.

The book opens in 1958, with a pivotal event in Wright's career — finding Robert Bly's new literary magazine, the Fifties, in his mailbox. It occasioned a new birth in his poetry and a momentous, mutually beneficial and ultimately unbreakable friendship. While Wright's undisguised hatred of Minneapolis never abated, he often stayed at Bly's farm in Madison, Minn., where he found release from his usual torments.

Blunk concentrates on Wright's intense devotion to poetry, and he fleshes out the genesis and development of various poems and collections, such as the long gestation of "The Branch Will Not Break," perhaps his most cherished book. All the while the poet's great intelligence, volubility, generosity and humor are on display.

Read on at the Star Tribune.