But he can’t get rid of himself enough
To write poetry. He keeps thinking Goddamn
I’ve misused myself I’ve fucked up I haven’t worked —
…
You bastard, you.
You and the paper should have known it, you and the ink: you write
…
With blackness. Night. Why has it taken you all this time?
—- James Dickey, The Zodiac
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 toward mine.
— James Wright, “Beginning”
When reading through a letter written by James Wright to James Dickey in 1958, I’m not sure if Wright’s audacity or his earnesty touched me more, but certainly, something touched me enough to feel the urge to share it—- and so you will find it below, with gratitude to Jonathan Blunk, who selected it for an issue of American Poetry Review that featured some of Wright’s correspondence.
Minneapolis
July 6, 1958
Dear Mr. Dickey:
I have just completed a book review for Sewanee, and tomorrow morning I will send it off. Mr (Monroe KJ Spears wants it by August 1, so I assume it will appear in the fall issue. Having read your essays with interest and attention for some tire (I realize that you will consider this statement a lie), I have added a discussion of your criticism to my review. I am going to tell Mr. Spears that, if the discussion is too long, he can either out it or remove it altogether. In any case, you have a right to read it beforehand, whether or not you think it is worth answering in print. I wish to say that 1 realize there are several of its points which are inadequately stated and, more often, inadequately developed. For example, I refer to my discussion of your remarks on Eberhart and Bridges. The issue is a major one, but I was cramped for space, having already exceeded the generous limits suggested by the editor. If you care to bother answering, I will try to elucidate the discussion further.
Before I quote the section of the review. I understand perfectly well that, as far as you are concerned, I am a bad poet, probably not a poet at all in any sense that you would care about or believe in. My reason for writing you this note-in addition to my recognizing your right to see a discus. sion of your ideas before it appears in print, so that you can answer it as you see fit—is that, unless I utterly misunderstand your writings, the sense in which you care about poetry and believe in it is very similar to the sense in which I care about it and believe in it myself. This is another statement which you will probably consider a lie. However that may be, I would not argue against your adverse judgment of my own work even if it were possible to do so. Since you both think and feel that my verses stink, it is your responsibility as well as your privilege to say so in print. But even if my poems are bad, and even if you do not believe that I care about poetry in the same way that you do. I am asking you to believe, purely on faith, that I do indeed care about it in some sense. There is something else that I want to say: in my discussion of your writings, I refer to Mr. Philip Booth. Perhaps you will immediately conclude that I am merely being protective about one of my friends. I have never met Mr. Booth. I have had a brief correspondence with him about editorial and other business matters; I told him that I enjoyed his book, especially the poem "First Lesson"; and I wrote him a note to thank him for his review of my book, a review which, though sober and courteous, was hardly drunken with enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, I am friends with very, very few current poets, and most of them are students who have never had anything published. I think, however, that generosity is not only a moral virtue. I think that it is also an act of intelligence. Sometimes students have cautiously and tentatively brought verses to me, under that somewhat silly impression of very young people that my having had something in print made me a valid judge; when their verses were sentimental and inept, I believe that I have criticized them honestly and severely, however, I have never greeted a student by telling her to go fuck herself and shove her hideous poems up her ass because they have blotched my soul and insulted the names of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. I believe your attack on Mr. Booth's verses amounted to something similar. I did not like it. It was destructive not only to Booth, but to you, and indeed to everybody who gives a damn about poetry, and who realizes that its best ally right now would be a courteous and judicious criticism. I think the relation of hatred to criticism is the same relation that exists between life and poetry. A good man will not necessarily thereby become a good poet; a good poet, on the other hand, is, I believe, by definition a good man. Sometimes a man tries to write poems and fails. I think the critic has fulfilled his responsibility when he says so and explains what he means. Sometimes good critics explain the standard by which they judge (I said explain, not merely state), and sometimes they go so far as to admit that there may possibly be, somewhere in the universe and in human history, standards different from their own. But if the versifier (like myself, as you well know) fails to achieve a poem, l don't see why the critic has to kick him in the balls.
Nothing that I've said about hatred can in the slightest way disqualify what I've said about my belief in the importance of your writings in Sewanee, but of course this is just one more belief in which you will not believe. The relevant section of my review is enclosed.
Yours,
James Wright