James Wright: A Life in Poetry by Jonathan Blunk

James Wright (1927-1980) was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet who grew up in a working class family in Martins Ferry, Ohio, across the river from West Virginia. This biography is exceptional in its depth. Jonathan Blunk was writing a thesis at Cornell on Wright at the time of Wright’s death in 1980. Ten years later he began recording more than 300 hours of interviews with people close to Wright, and in 2002 he began to work seriously on this biography, authorized by Wright’s family that providing access to a plethora of letters and other intimate materials. “How did James Wright become one of the great poets of his time, a deep seeker of what he called ‘the pure clear word’? Blunk’s definitive, perceptive, and compassionate biography tells the full story of a representative and necessary maker. A sustaining achievement.” – Edward Hirsch. “[Wright’s] life reads like something out of a Greek myth or Puccini opera: poverty, self-destruction, drunkenness, doubt, loving friends, illicit romanc