A Wild Perfection

There is something about the very form and occasion of a letter-the possibility it offers, the chance to be as open and tentative and uncertain as one likes and also the chance to formulate certain ideas, very precisely-if one is lucky in one’s thoughts, wrote James Wright, one of the great lyric poets of the last century, in a letter. A Wild Perfection is a riveting collection that captures the exhilarating and moving correspondence between Wright and his many friends. In the letters to fellow poets Donald Hall, Theodore Roethke, Galway Kinnell, James Dickey, Mary Oliver, and Robert Bly, Wright explored many subjects, poetic and personal, from his creative process to his struggles with depression and illness. Bright threads of wit, gallantry, and passion for describing his travels and his beloved natural world run through all these letters, which together form an epistolary chronicle of a significant part of the mid-century American poetry renaissance, as well as the clearest biographical picture now available of this major American poet.