MPR’s Mike Edgerly interviews unknown gentleman about exhibit of material from renowned American poet James Wright, including diaries and correspondence with W. H. Auden, John Crowe Ransom, and Theodore Roethke.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) Virtually, all of those manuscripts with various drafts of his poems. There are there's an enormous correspondence with people like wh Auden John Crowe Ransom Cedar a red key and his Diaries notebooks some photographs. It's very rich
(00:00:25) collection. How many drafts typically would he go through in writing a poem any idea
(00:00:32) many in fact, one of the poems were showing a draft of in the exhibit. It was at the executed murderers grave is the title of that end. The only thing that he retained from the first page of an early draft was the title he went on to completely redraft to pull on me. He worked as Palms over very hard and Sometimes will even divide a poem in the two poems in the process of working on them.
(00:01:05) He was awarded the Pulitzer in 1972. It took a long time for that recognition to come did it
(00:01:10) not fairly long. Although in 72, I guess James Wright would have been approximately 49 years old something like that, but it's it was Out of a long road for him, but he began together quite a bit of recognition around that time and I think it's continued from that time on until his death and then also posthumously up to the
(00:01:43) present. What are his best-known Works
(00:01:47) probably is the one that he liked the best on the is probably the best known as to a blossoming pear tree. That was one of his later collections a couple of others that are quite well-known are at the branch will not break on the shall We Gather at the river. And there have been just recently two years ago. I believe because collected poems were published called above the river is were edited by his wife Annie
(00:02:18) riot. What is his place in American letters?
(00:02:22) Well, I think he will be a very important figure from his generation. I think he was closely tied to writers like Robert Bly and Louis Simpson and Donald Hall he fits very much into to that group and I think wrote a lot dealing with nature in his later years. He seemed to go from in his earlier years feeling sort of removed from from nature even antagonistic to a 2 in the last year's communion more weather and feeling more at one with it. I think it's the that sort of a theme that he'll probably be best remembered for.