In a Dark Time … The Eye Begins to See

Eisenhower’s Visit to Franco, 1959 … we die of cold, and not of darkness. -Unamuno The American hero must triumph over The forces of darkness. He has flown through the very light of heaven And come down in the slow dusk Of Spain. Franco stands in a shining circle of police. His arms open in [...]

It sometimes amazes me how I am led from one thought to another, from one work to another. While reading about Bly and Stafford, I repeatedly encountered the name of James Wright. When I started reading about Wright, I found that Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost were two of the poets he most admired at [...]

In her introduction to Above the River, Anne Wright refers to the poems in this section of the book as “experimental poems.” They are, in large part, poems that employ imagery often described as “deep imagery.” To a certain extent, they differ not only in style, but also in content, for there seems to be [...]

The poems in the last section of Wright’s Above the River were written while he was staying in Europe, particularly in Italy and, generally, they reflect the Mediterranean atmosphere. Now, personally, I’m not too fond of warm, sunny climates preferring the snow-covered mountains, or perhaps the wind-blown Scottish Highlands. But if you’re attracted to warm [...]