James Wright:: "The Mini-Series"

In a past post, I believe I mentioned the fact that Wesleyan University Press has issued a teeny version of perhaps my favorite book of poetry, The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright. It occurred to me I didn't show how teeny it is, so here it is above. It is a hardcover and I just weighed it on my mail scale: 1.1 ounces. I have the ability to have this with me at all times and usually do. It weighs less than my mp3 player, fer chrissakes, and though that has over 900 songs, the set of songs is no where near as lyrical as these 43 poems. Or nearly as boring. How can you get bored with 900 songs?

That's another story, for 21st century historians to cogitate. I'm afraid the verdict will not be good.

So while I have it in hand, literally, let me share another little gem from this groundbreaking volume. Besides being a lyrical poet of the first order, Wright was an accomplished translator. I will forever be in his depth for his translations of Hermann Hesse, in the volume simply entitled Poems. Though narrow in scope, Wright strictly selected work concerned with what might loosely be described as "homesickness," a theme the two poets shared. It is nonetheless a valuable collection, one of only a few in English by the prolific poet, Hesse (yes, we have lots of his great fiction, but a truly miniscule amount of his poetry - if there are any translators out there who want to see Hesse's work see the light of day, I'm interested).

In a footnote to the following translation, Wright says: "These three stanzas are from Goethe's poem Harzreise im Winter. They are the stanzas which Brahms detached from the poem and employed as the test for his Alto Rhapsody of 1869."

Three Stanzas From Goethe

That man there, who is he?
His path lost in the thicket,
Behind him the bushes
Lash back together,
The grass rises again,
The waste devours him.

Oh, who will heal the sufferings
Of the man whose balm turned poison?
Who drank nothing
but hatred of men from loves abundance?
Once despised, not a despiser,
He kills his own life,
The precious secret.
The self-seeker finds nothing.

Oh Father of Love,
If your psaltery holds one tone
That his ear still might echo,
Then quicken his heart!
Open his eyes, shut off by clouds
From the thousand fountains
So near him, dying of thirst
In his own desert.

Goethe
translated by James Wright

The subject, tone, and even style perfectly fit the poems this translation is surrounded by in The Branch Will Not Break. As with Hesse, it shows how a translator/poet, in a sense, makes another's work his own.

So if you'd like something to carry along while waiting around for your front-end to be aligned, your wisdom teeth to be extracted, or your boss to stop talking, this tiny little volume may do the trick. I purchased it directly from Wesleyan University Press (see "teeny version" link above) but be forewarned: they charge an outrageous amount to ship it. Though my amazon link boycott stands and I like to buy direct from small presses when I can, you can get it from amazon at a slightly less outrageous rate. Search via isbn (978-0-8195-6841-0) to make sure you get the right version.

No matter what the size, this is a near perfect book of poems.

best,
Don

Good News and Good News

James Wright

Well, there is good news and then there is good news. The primary good news appears to be that, for now, the computer troubles I was having are in the rear view. The other good news, which is really bad news that I choose to view as good news, is I've fallen considerably behind in putting together cogent thoughts for posts and so today I'm going to simply post a poem from one of the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list.

This is the well I've gone to perhaps the most from that list and I do intend to move on but it's time for one last poem. This, from James Wright's The Branch Will Not Break:




I Was Afraid of Dying

Once,
I was afraid of dying
In a field of dry weeds.
But now,
All day long I have been walking among damp fields,
Trying to keep still, listening
To insects that move patiently.
Perhaps they are sampling the fresh dew that gathers slowly
In empty snail shells
And in the secret shelters of sparrow feathers fallen on the
----earth.

James Wright

More soon,
Don

James Wright: The Blue Jay and the Levitation of All Things

The Branch Will Not Break is truly a treasure trove of the best of James Wright. There are so many excellent pieces in this collection they almost outnumber the just average work. Here's another poem that resonates from here to heaven and back again:


Beginning

The moon drops one of two feathers into the field.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon's young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean into mine.

I listen to this poem and I think first of the old Japanese custom of throwing moon-viewing parties. Once again, there is an Oriental element to this work, but something else also. There is a touch of surrealism and that is really what makes this particular piece work. Somehow, when the woman lifts up, you feel it and it feels right. All this without the benefit of a soundtrack, as in the Talking Heads classic "And She Was," which comes to mind.

I love the following for its sheer reality, it feels like an actual moment that the poet perfectly captures:


from Two Hangovers

Number Two: I Try To Waken And Greet The World
----------------------Once Again

In a pine tree,
A few yards away from my window sill,
A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and
-----down,
On a branch.
I laugh, as I see him abandon himself
To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do
That the branch will not break.

James Wright

best,
Don

A Blessing by James Wright

Arguably the best poem James Wright ever wrote, certainly a personal favorite of many, even the most casual, of poetry readers, "A Blessing" seems a perfect choice for the holidays. It is the center piece of The Branch Will Not Break, the volume being featured from the "Near Perfect Books of Poetry" list.

The last three lines illustrate the Eastern influence on Wright's work. They might be extracted for a near perfect Western style haiku. Certainly, the lines resonate in many ways, transcendence being the primary one.

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

James Wright

For the next two weeks, the regular weekly post featuring poems from the Lilliput Back Issue archives will be on Friday due to the Thursday holidays.


Wishing all the best of holidays,


Don

James Wright and Mary Oliver

Continuing a look at James Wright's classic volume The Branch Will Not Break, here is a poem of a revelation in reverse, if you will:

Depressed By A Book Of Bad Poetry, I Walk
--Toward An Unused Pasture And Invite
-----------The Insects to Join Me

Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone,
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment, and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins
In the maple trees.

James Wright

I have spent a good deal of time reading boatloads of Mary Oliver lately. She is the next poet we will be covering in the 3 Poems By discussion group at my place of employment. Though she undoubtedly would have done Wright's poem very differently, the method, the tone, and the sentiment might be remarkably similar. Oliver is all about observation, musing, and revelation (and, occasionally, transcendence).

All of that may be found in the following, though the order is decidedly different. Here is a description by Oliver, complete with grasshopper, of exactly what Wright is doing after being disgusted by that bad poetry:


The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

best,
Don

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.