A Biographical Sketch:

James Wright was born in Martin's Ferry, Ohio in 1927 and died of cancer in New York in 1980.  He wrote with compassion about social outcasts--criminals, prostitutes, and the insane--as well as politics, nature, and human relationships.  ...In a poem entitled "Many of our Waters," Wright offers [a] comment on his goals:

        The kind of poetry I want to write is
                The poetry of a grown man.
        The young poets of New York come to me with
        Their mangled figures of speech,
        But they have little pity
        For the pure clear word.

        I know something about the pure clear word,
        Though I am not yet a grown man.
         And who is he?
Wright's "pure clear words" illustrate various poetic options available to contemporary poets; he wrote both closed and open form poems ... (Ray Schulte)