★★★★★ 4
Sublime Poetry Slightly Flawed by Format
Format: Paperback
I hate to give this work anything less than 5-stars, because at the moment (and probably most future moments) I revere James Wright's poetry. He makes blue collar blackened river Ohio come alive riven death with darkness and life. So this book is a must for poetry lovers.
Where it distracts me is the attempts at completeness is a difficult editor's dilemma and one that doesn't serve the poet or the poet's reader well here. There are two James Wright's out there (this book presents three), as is true with most sublimated artist that pass through a learning phase before hitting on their voice, their style.
James Wright started as a formalist (not my favored style) hailing structure and rhyme sometimes at the expense of meaning and language (disclaimer...one man's humble opinion belies a personal taste and no two taste buds seem the same). The book of course being a complete work, offers all of those poems of bandied prose. And then the editor offers a bridge or break of sorts in Wright's translated works of German and Spanish poets. Wright was a great poet in English, but the gift of gifted translation should have been left to the likes of W.S. Merwin, Anthony Kerrigan, Charles Tomlinson, and Stephen Mitchell for Neruda, Paz, and Rilke.
So, Wright's "Above the River," really first breaks the surface on page 119 after his epiphany to all thing free form. It is then that his poetry sings darkly. I leave you with some of Wright's beautiful language (there's plenty to be had). Buy the book for the rest.
In Fear of Harvests
It has happened
Before: nearby,
The nostrils of slow horses
Breathe evenly,
And the brown bees drag their high garlands,
Heavily,
Toward hives of snow.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2003
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