Ministry of Higher Education And Scientific Research University of Al-Qadissiya College of Education Department of English Alienation in James Wright’s Poetry Submitted By: Ali Muhsen Hussein Azzuz Sanaa Hashim Supervised By: Asst. Lect. Hawraa Fadil
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Ministry of Higher Education And Scientific Research University of Al-Qadissiya College of Education Department of English
Alienation in James Wright’s Poetry Submitted By: Ali Muhsen Hussein Azzuz
Sanaa Hashim Supervised By:
Asst. Lect. Hawraa Fadil
Dedication
To our dear parents for their patience ,understanding and support.
ii
Acknowledgements
This success would not be achieved without, guidance,
advice, help and encouragement from our supervisor Asst. Lect.
Hawraa Fadil who supports us to finish this paper.
iii
Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
Contents iv
Abstract v
Chapter One
1.1 James Wright’s Life and Career 1
2.3 Alienation In Literature 6
Notes 10
Chapter Two
Alienation in James Wright’s 12
“Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio”
Notes 18
Chapter Three
Alienation in James Wright’s “A Blessing” 19
Notes 22
Conclusion 23
Bibliography 24
iv
Abstract
Until recently, any serious reader of American poetry could have named,
perhaps even recited, a handful of poems by James Wright. They would most
likely be from such as “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio and “A Blessing,
which represent the fertile meeting ground of two powerful currents in midcentury
American poetry.
This paper consists of three chapters. chapter one fauces on James Wright’s
life and career and alienation in literature . Chapter two discusses Alienation in
James Wright’s “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio”, while chapter three
discusses Alienation in Wright’s “A Blessing.”
Finally ,the conclusion sums up the findings of this paper.
V
Chapter One
1.1 James Wright’s Life and Career
Wright is an American poet and translator. His poetry has gradually evolved
in style from traditional to experimental verse, consistently reflecting strong lyric
grace. Considered by many critics to be one of the finest poets writing in America
today, Wright received the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1972.1
On December 13, 1927, James Arlington Wright was born in Martins Ferry,
Ohio. While in high school in 1943 Wright suffered a nervous breakdown and
missed a year of school. When he graduated in 1946, a year late, he joined the
army and was stationed in Japan during the American occupation. He then attended
Kenyon College on the G.I. Bill, and studied under John Crowe Ransom. He in
married 1952. The two traveled to Austria, where, on a Fulbright Fellowship,
Wright studied the works of Theodor Storm and Georg Trakl at the University of
Vienna. He returned to the U.S. and earned master’s and doctoral degrees at the
University of Washington, studying with Theodore Roethke and Stanley Kunitz.
He went on to teach at The University of Minnesota, Macalester College, and New
York City’s Hunter College.2
The poverty and human suffering Wright witnessed as a child profoundly
influenced his writing and he used his poetry as a mode to discuss his political and
social concerns. He modeled his work after Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost,
whose engagement with profound human issues and emotions he admired. The
subjects of Wright’s earlier books, The Green Wall (1957)and Saint Judas (1959),
include men and women who have lost love or have been marginalized from
society for such reasons as poverty and sexual orientation, and they invite the
reader to step in and experience the pain of their isolation. 3
Wright possessed the ability to reinvent his writing style at will, moving
easily from stage to stage. His earlier work adheres to conventional systems of
meter and stanza, while his later work exhibits more open, looser forms, as with
The Branch Will Not Break (1963). James Wright was elected a fellow of the
Academy of American Poets in 1971, and the following year his Collected Poems
received the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. He died in New York City on March 25,
1980.4
Wright's early poetry is relatively conventional in form and meter, especially
compared with his later, looser poetry. Although most of his fame comes from his
original poetry, Wright made a contribution to another area or literary modernism-
the translation. His work with translations of German and South American poets,
as well as the poetry and aesthetic position of Robert Bly, had considerable
influence on his own poems; this is most evident in The Branch Will Not Break,
which departs radically from the formal style of Wright's previous book, Saint
Judas. In addition to his own poetry, he also published loose translations of René
Char's hermetic poems.5
His poetry often deals with people who deprive of the right to vote, or the
American outsider. Wright suffered from depression and unstable mood disorders
and also he Addicted to Alcohol his entire life. He experienced several nervous
breakdowns, was hospitalized, and was subjected to electroshock therapy. His dark
moods and focus on emotional suffering were part of his life and often the focus of
his poetry, although given the emotional disorder he experienced personally, his
poems can be optimistic in expressing a faith in life and human distinction. In The
Branch Will Not Break, the enduring human spirit becomes thematic .6
Technically, Wright was an innovator, especially in the use of his titles, first
lines, and last lines, which he used to great dramatic effect in defense of the lives
of the with people who deprive of the right to vote. He is equally well known for
his tender depictions of the bleak landscapes of the post-industrial American
Midwest. Since his death, Wright has developed a cult following, transforming him
into a seminal writer of significant influence. Hundreds of writers gathered
annually for decades following his death to pay tribute at the James Wright Poetry
Festival held from 1981 through 2007 in Martins Ferry .7
Wright proceeded through three rather distinct phases in his poetic career, in
all of which he produced work so commendable that he is considered one of the
half-dozen best poets of his generation. He is also one of a few poets to have
gathered a kind of popular following. For several years after his death, a group of
devotees met annually in Martins Ferry on the anniversary to hold a memorial
reading and reminisce about Wright’s life and work .8
James Wright wrote contemplative, sturdy, and generous poems with an
honesty, clarity, and stylistic range matched by very few--then or now. From his
Deep Image-inspired lyrics to his Whtimanesque renderings of Neruda, Vallejo,
and other Latin American poets, and from his heartfelt reflections on life, love, and
loss in his native Ohio to the celebrated prose poems (set frequently in Italy) that
marked the end of his important career, Above the River gathers the complete
work of a modern master. It also features a moving and insightful introduction by
Donald Hall, Wright's longtime friend and colleague .9
number of Wright poems touch on persons or events and are conceived in
the same terms of intimate acquaintance and objective existence. Though he
closely scrutinizes his experience, Wright never tries to maneuver it for his own
purposes. Frequently he pauses to study the most ordinary things which his
imagination then lifts from the limbo of the routine and unworthy in the at tempt to
find out the meanings lying dormant in them. Everything has its shadow, its hidden
life, disclosed by the poet .10
At present, the criticism of James Wright's poetry lives mainly in reviews
and a few essays, several of which contain more than a nugget or two of insight.
These writings deal with a poet still at work and, thus, are confined to discussions
of his latest books, or to the relation of new work to previous work .11
American mainstream poetry after the 1950s has often been categorized as
neo-Romantic, since the general poetic stance resides basically on a dualism
between the Subject which means the human consciousness and the nature.
However, with poets like Wright constantly preoccupied with self-acceptance,
which comes from a deeper understanding of and immersion into nature, this
dualism becomes more than simply a relationship.12
While the speaker of Wright’s poems is often constricted by a preoccupation
with inner self, he often recognizes and laments the transformation of the natural
landscape that results from the industrial culture of his hometown. Although he left
his home region of the upper Ohio Valley early in his life, Wright’s poetry
illustrates how the memory of and experience in one’s native landscapes provide a
way of perceiving and processing all other experience and places thereafter. While
much scholarship has noted the questing aspect of Wright’s body of work, and
although his pursuit of education and his writing career led him Westward and
overseas to Italy, Ohio is a constant presence in his work. And while scholars have
also noted Wright’s self-admitted ambivalent relationship with his native Ohio, his
representations of the region symbolically transform the landscape into depictions
that effectively critique the culture of small-town industrial America.13
At the same time, Wright recognizes the part of himself that is eternally
rooted in the small river town of Martins Ferry, Ohio. That sense of rootedness
results from the connection between place, the culture that inhabits it, and the
meaningful experiences one has within it. Wright’s Ohio poems clearly illustrate
the way in which poetic place representations symbolically reconstruct landscapes
into cultural critiques that raise the reader’s consciousness toward the interaction
between human culture and place.14
To this end, Wright’s recollected landscapes address several aspects of the
landscape mode, specifically the relationship between external and internal
landscapes, identity, and the subjective processing of place. Across the body of
Wright’s work, his landscape depictions generally fall into one of two categories:
pastoral landscapes of immediacy, and recollections of the landscapes of home.
The poems of immediacy tend to describe the immediate and present effect of the
landscape on the speaker as the poem generally moves from a description of the
external world to the internal.15
2.1 Alienation In Literature
Alienation is the basic form of rootlessness, which forms the subject of
many psychological, sociological, literary and philosophical studies. Alienation is
a major theme of human condition in the contemporary epoch. It is only natural
that a pervasive phenomenon like alienation should leave such an indelible impact
upon the contemporary literature. Alienation emerges as natural consequence of
existential predicament both in intrinsic and extrinsic terms .21
The theme of alienation has been variously dealt with persistently and
unflinchingly in modern literature. The alienated protagonist is a recurrent figure in
much of the twentieth century American and European fiction. Alienation in its
various forms, has been dealt with in the existentialistic literature. Owing to its
historical and socio-cultural reasons, the Indo-English literature also, could not
remain unaffected by it. Alienation is the result of loss of identity. The
dispossessed personality's search for identity is a common place theme in modern
fiction .21
Alienation is a common theme in literature as it can elicit many deep
emotions. It can be attached to characters who have acted very drastically or who
need to do so. Either way, alienated characters create a sense of intrigue with the
personal reliance that they are faced with. Receiving help from others is not as
applicable to these people. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, “The Minister’s Black Veil,”
Anne Sexton’s, “The Farmer’s Wife,” and T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock” each magnificently create their own sense of character alienation
.18
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” the story is told of
the isolation of a man draped with a black veil over his face. At the beginning
when the minister, Mr. Hooper, and his veil first appeared in church, it took only a
few seconds for the townspeople to describe Hooper in censorious terms such as
mad and awful. He was not asked any questions to explain himself. Rather, these
people turned on him immediately and were convinced that the veil was hiding
something. The veil being black symbolizes a sense of mystery and darkness in the
minister. Hawthorne described how the veil was like that of a sinful secret between
Hooper and the townspeople .19
This secret was never revealed, which only further alienated Hooper.
Despite the astonishment others felt towards him, Mr. Hooper acted very casually
and did not seem to notice the fear of the churchgoers. After the services, Hooper
greeted the churchgoers as he usually would by paying respects to the elderly and
putting his hand on children’s heads. These indiscreet actions in no way relieved
the feelings toward Hooper. Hawthorne, though, stated that maybe the
congregation was as fearful to Hooper as he was to them .20
Alienation emerges as natural consequences of existential predicament. It is
necessary to understand the meaning of existentialism. Existentialism is not a well
organized and systematic philosophy of life nor can its beginning be pinpointed.
Jean Wahl considers existentialism as “Philosophies of existence”. It is also
considered as a sharp reaction of all forms of rationalism. Kierkegaard reacted
against Hegelian idealism. Marcel reacted against the idealist like F.H. Bradley and
Brunschvieg. Another important point to be discussed is the dictum that the
existentialists set forth existence precedes essence. They asserted that man first of
all exists and then only he thinks of it .32
Not surprisingly, Wright's estrangement from history and home parallels the
relentless loneliness pervading his work. As he undergoes changes in his
orientation toward history and home, so does he transcend this loneliness. But this
change involves much more. For Wright, loneliness is the basic fact of things, of
being. The limitations of the physical body exacerbate this condition. Though a
source of delight, the body ultimately separates one human spirit from another. It
reminds one of mortality and cosmic aloneness. Thus Wright moves between a
dedication to the facts of the physical body and a desire to transcend the body. He
also vacillates between the need for a personal, almost confessional, relationship
with the reader and the opposing wish to withdraw and have both writer and
reader. 22
Though Wright never resolves these conflicts, he comes to praise the
intractable uniqueness of each life. His metaphysical loneliness eventually wanes
under the influence of a happy love relationship; in his final book, a consoling aura
of "solitude" supplants his lonel iness One need not look far into Wright's poetry to
find examples of loneliness and the limitations of the body. Reading Wright’s work
within the framework of the landscape mode, specifically noting the exchange
between internal and external and the transformation of place into symbolic and
metaphoric expression, emphasizes these tensions among Wright, his past, present,
and the self-proclaimed “complicated feelings” about the place of his upbringing
surface again and again.23
Notes
1
Saundra Maley, Solitary Apprenticeship: James Wright and German Poetry
(Lewiston, Maine: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996),p.43.
2 Ibid.
3 David C. Dougherty , James Wright ( Boston: Twayne, 1987,)p.8.
4 Frank N. Magill, “Critical Survey of Poetry.” Vol. 8. Pasadena: Salem,
1992,p.13.
5 Ibid.
6 Robert Bly ,The Work of James Wright. James Wright: The Heart of Light. By
Stitt and Graziano, eds ( Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
2991.)
7 Ibid.
8 Andrew Elkins ,The Poetry of James Wright ( Tuscaloosa: The University of
Alabama Press, 1991,)p.54.
9 Ibid,p.55.
10 Mary Ruby and Ira Mark Milne, Poetry for Students Farmington :The Gale
Group Hills,2000),p.16.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid,p.17.
13 William Scott Hanna, In Search of the Self, In Search of the Land: Toward a
Contemporary American Poetics of Place ( Pennsylvania: Indiana University Press
2012),p.33.
14 Ibid.
15 Dave Smith, “James Wright: The Pure Clear World, an Interview.” The Pure
Clear World: Essays on the Poetry of James Wright. Chicago: Illinois University
Press , 1982),p.45.
16 Ibid.
17 G.A. Nettler ,A Measure of Alienation ,Middletown: Wesleyan University Press ,
2991,) p.71.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid,p.51.
20 Crane R.S .The Humanities ( Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967,)p.6.