Wright, James, 1927–80, American poet, b. Ohio. He studied at Kenyon College and the Univ. of Washington. Wright was the master of an elegant, beautifully controlled style. His early poems contained surrealistic juxtapositions; later works abandoned willed complexity in favor of a plainer diction. His collections include The Green Wall (1957), Shall We Gather at the River? (1968), Collected Poems (1971, Pulitzer Prize), To a Blossoming Pear Tree (1977), and the posthumous volumes This Journey (1982), The Shape of Light (1986), and Above the River: The Complete Poems (1990). He also translated Latin American, European, and Chinese poetry.
See his collected prose, ed. A. Wright (1982); biography by J. Blunk (2017).
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