James Wright: A Prayer To Escape From The Market Place

The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright is one of the greatest volumes of poetry of the twentieth century. This was brought home to me again as I perused Wright's Selected Poems for a review I'm preparing of a new collection of poems in his memory. Some of the poems simply jump off the page and throttle, all the more amazing since they askew the easy modern method of engagement that is direct address, which many a modern poet uses like cheap whiskey to get there fast, only truly arriving the following morning.

Here is the first poem of a few I hope to feature in the coming weeks.




-------------------------------------------------------------

A Prayer To Escape From The Market Place

I renounce the blindness of the magazines.
I want to lie down under a tree.
This is the only duty that is not death.
This is the everlasting happiness
Of small winds.
Suddenly,
A pheasant flutters, and I turn
Only to see him vanishing at the damp edge
Of the road.

James Wright

-------------------------------------------------------------

Notice the haiku-like, epiphanic moment, beginning "Suddenly ...," which echoes a similar moment at the conclusion of perhaps the most famous poem from The Branch Will Not Break, "A Blessing":

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
into blossom.

And, yes, we do know what type of magazines he was referring to, eh?



best,
Don


PS While typing this I discovered by serendipity that last week was the anniversary of Wright's birthday.