Jay L. Wright (born May 25, 1934) is an American poet, playwright, and essayist. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he lives in Bradford, Vermont. Although his work is not as widely known as other American poets of his generation, it has received considerable critical acclaim, with some comparing Wright's poetry to the work of Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot and Hart Crane. Others associate Wright with the African-American poets Robert Hayden and Melvin B. Tolson, due to his complexity of theme and language, as well as his work's utilization and transformation of the Western literary heritage. Wright's work is representative of what the Guyanese-British writer Wilson Harris has termed the "cross-cultural imagination", inasmuch as it incorporates elements of African, European, Native American and Latin American cultures. and Dante Micheaux has called Wright "unequivocally, the greatest living American poet"."

Life and education

Wright's family origins are emblematic of the multi-cultural nature of his literary work. His mother, Leona Dailey, was born in Virginia and had both African and Native American ancestry, while his father, George Murphy, or Mercer Murphy Wright, as he was also known, claimed African, Cherokee and Irish roots. Murphy held diverse blue-collar jobs, which included working construction, driving a jitney, and working as a handyman. However, Wright grew up in foster care in Albuquerque, and moved to San Pedro, California, in his teens to live with his father.

When he was in high school, Wright began to play bass, Jazz music informs Wright's work and aesthetic in various ways, In 1954, Wright abandoned his baseball career to serve in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Germany until 1957; in this period he was able to travel in many countries in Europe. In 1964, he taught English and medieval history for a year at the Butler Institute in Guadalajara, Mexico. Wright has been described as a member of the Black Arts Movement, although in a monograph dedicated to the movement, only Wright's first book, The Homecoming Singer, is discussed in connection with the group. Indeed, Wright's poem "Idiotic and Politic", from The Homecoming Singer, has been read as "a virtual declaration of independence from BAM," addressed directly to LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), the founder of the Black Arts Movement. Wright himself has disowned the book in print, saying that it was not intended as a unified work, but merely as "a group of poems selected from those [he] had on hand". At the time the book was published, Wright was employed on a tour of black schools in the South for the Woodrow Wilson-National Endowment of the Arts program, and Carolyn Kizer thought he ought to have a book of poems; therefore, she helped him publish the book with Diane DiPrima of Poets Press. In the poems that were not republished in The Homecoming Singer, the language, imagery and sensibility have been described as romantic and conventional in nature. In other poems from this collection, however, the tone, style and subject matter are not dissimilar to those found in poems published many years later as regards their concern for religious experience and the exploration of African myth and religion. Critical reception of The Homecoming Singer was positive, and Wright was immediately recognized as a major voice. However, in contrast to Wright's later work, the themes of this book have been described as "conventional".

While some critics argue for a change of direction in Wright's work after Death as History and The Homecoming Singer (and some parts of Soothsayers and Omens), others find instead continuity and unity in the poet's work.

Awards

  • 1986: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (or "Genius") Fellowship
  • 1996: Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets
  • 2001: L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award, Transfigurations: Collected Poems
  • 2005: Bollingen Prize in Poetry, becoming the first African-American writer to be so honored
  • 2006: American Book Award Lifetime Achievement Award from the Before Columbus Foundation

Bibliography

Poetry

  • Death as History. New York: Poets Press. 1967
  • The Homecoming Singer. New York: Corinth Books. 1971
  • Dimensions of History. Kayak. 1976.
  • The Double Invention of Komo. University of Texas Press. 1980
  • Explications/Interpretations. University of Virginia. 1984
  • Selected Poems of Jay Wright. Robert B. Stepto (ed.) New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1987.
  • Elaine's Book. University of Virginia Press. 1988.
  • Boleros. Princeton University Press. 1991
  • Music's Mask and Measure. Chicago: Flood Editions. 2007.
  • The Prime Anniversary. Chicago: Flood Editions. 2019.
  • Thirteen Quintets for Lois. Chicago: Flood Editions. 2021.
  • Postage Stamps. Chicago: Flood Editions. 2023.

Plays

  • Balloons: A Comedy in One Act. Baker's Plays, 1968
  • The Geometry of Rhythm, in The Prime Anniversary. Chicago: Flood Editions. 2019.

Prose

  • "Introduction" in Dumas, Henry. Play Ebony: Play Ivory. Random House. 1974.

Anthologies

References

  • Bollingen Prize website
  • Book Review: Transfigurations
  • Jay Wright's poetry focus of symposium at Washington University
  • Jay Wright Poetry Reading at Columbia College
  • Audio recording: "Kenneth Koch and Jay Wright reading their poems in the Coolidge Auditorium, Nov. 15, 1976". Library of Congress.