Wright, James

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James Wright, 1927–80, American poet, b. Ohio. He studied at Kenyon College and the Univ. of Washington. The master of an elegant, beautifully controlled style, his early poems contained surrealistic juxtapositions. Later works abandoned willed complexity in favor of a plainer diction. His works include The Green Wall (1957), Shall We Gather at the River? (1968), To a Blossoming Pear Tree (1977), and the posthumous The Shape of Light (1986).

See his collected prose, ed. A. Wright (1982).

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