James Wright Books

The review by Mr. Fowler pretty much sums up the book. For me there isn't anyone who can capture images of Big Bend quite like James Evans. I have long been a fan of his work and have waited for this book for many years. For those who have never been to the Big Bend region this book offers a chance to be introduced to what makes it so special. It isn't just the landscapes, it is the people. Big Bend Pictures communicates to me what makes west Texas so special. To stare into these pictures allows me to travel back to the region and experience again the heat, the dry air, the clouds(good lord the clouds, just look at how he captures the clouds) and the people. Gaze into the eyes of his subjects and know what it means to live life. Big Bend is like no other place on earth and James' photographs are like no others.

The Big Bend area of West Texas is both seductive and elusive to visitors. The immense scale, loneliness and beauty of the desert scenery can immediately charm any visitor to this remote borderland, and many books have succeeded in extolling these virtues. However, the human denizens of the Big Bend can be quirky lot, with a big dose of individuality an apparent requirement for remaining in these parts for very long.
In this new large-format book, James Evans has succeeded admirably in capturing for the viewer the essence of the human dimension of this vast land. Yes there are panoramas and thunderstorms on these pages, but it's the direct and intimate portraits of the people that will capture your attention. Elderly ranchers (and ranch women), young children, Anglos, Hispanics, funerals, dances, homes, animals - all powerful and direct visual statements. Many of these scenes aren't pretty. There's grit and violence, poverty, sadness; but it's all real. Evans has spent the past 15 years living in the Big Bend (he has a studio and gallery in tiny Marathon, TX), taking time to really know his subjects, gaining their trust, opening a window of truth before his lens. As a regular visitor to these parts, I feel Evans has finally captured the real essence of this amazing region for all of us Big Bend lovers to enjoy.
There are 102 duotone photographs, most are full or double page. A real bonus is James' comments about each photograph in the rear appendix. It is there we come to understand a little more about each of his subjects, and ultimately a bit about Evans as well. And good value, too; lots of book here for the quite reasonable price. And I like the horned lizard endpapers.

I picked up this book looking to learn a thing or two about urban poverty in the United States. What I walked away with was an eye-opening & gut-wrenching portrayal of how the American right has distorted perceptions about urban poverty for 40 years and how the successes of public policy have been overshadowed by urban myths and suburban conventional wisdom.

Wright and Devine force the issue on drugs, crime, & opportunity and make the case that non-intervention is not an option. To ask today's urban poor to employ self-reliance alone is to ask the impossible. What's more, Wright and Devine offer a compelling argument for why fiscal spending on social policy may not actually cost Americans a single dollar in the long run and may end up saving them billions of dollars over the next century.

Anyone who thinks the popular perception of the urban poor as lazy, shiftless vagrants might be a bit awry, or anyone who is open-minded enough to hear the case for helping those in need, should read this book! It will change the way you think about urban poverty forever.

I would also recommend the follow up to this book "Beside the Golden Door" also by Wright et al.

This Book Is a very good read, it is well written, precise, and wonderfully informative. I read this book for a sociology paper and i enjoyed every second that i was reading it. i give it two thumbs up!!.

This book is a model for a relatively concise but thorough biography of an under-appreciated historical figure. The writing is skillful, and the text benefits immensely from extensive quotations from Wright's voluminous letters. Wright's voice is lively and witty and she makes very good company for the 7 or 8 hours required to read this book.

In the eyes of history, Wright has been overshadowed by her older sister Lucretia Mott and her contemporaries Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But her central participation in both the woman's rights and anti-slavery causes secures her a place as one of the giants of the mid-19th century. Wright believed strongly in the benefits of free expression and complete tolerance even of shocking views expressed by others. She thus anticipated many intellectual currents of the late 20th century.

This book is very much worth reading.

I am a descendent of Martha Coffin Wright and I had not know about her illustrious history before I read this book. I felt compelled to educate myself about her and her daughter Ellen who is my great grandmother. I had received a call from the National Park Service to ask me how I felt about being a relative of Martha Coffin Wright and did I know about the National Monument at Seneca Falls, New York and that then Mrs. Clinton would speak at the official celebration of the signing of the Women's Rights Manefesto. I was ignorant of the association of my family with the signers of the Document as I had been blinded by the weight of my patriarchal lineage from the Garrison side. I was thrilled to learn of the depth of the involvement of Martha Wright and Lucretia Coffin Mott, her older sister, and her daughter Ellen and their many adventures with the Underground Railway, especially through their deep connection with Sojourner Truth.
I have since met James Livingston and connected with him about our relationship and I enjoy being open to a whole new aspect of my family history.

"A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright" is one of the most entertaining collections of American literary correspondence since Flannery O'Connor's "Habit of Being." The letters of poet and teacher James Wright, which have been selected and edited by his wife, Anne, and Professor Saundra Rose Maley, begin when he's a young man in the army in 1946 and continue through until his death by cancer in 1980.

If there is one salient trait that comes through in these letters, it is his deep compassion for others, the sense that James Wright was really a very nice guy. Despite bouts of poverty and chronic alcoholism, he never waxed cynical about the world or those around him.

His correspondence includes letters to Robert Bly, James Dickey, Mary Oliver, and Theodore Roethke, and Wright is at his most entertaining when he is related daily anecdotes.

In a letter to his friend, the poet Donald Hall, Wright wrote: "Whatever a poet has been in the past, right now he is defined, to me, as a man who has both the power and the courage to see, and then, to show, the truth through words. If I'm a bad poet, that means a liar."

The truth of James Wright resounds throughout these letters.

This volume is full of beautiful letters by a poet whom loved poetry as much as his own dear life. I can't recommend this book enough for everyone who is a fan of Wright, but also to aspiring writers for it contains a wealth of instruction. His letters to Robert Bly are particularly interesting. Of all the "letters of" books I have read, this is by far the best.

To me this was a very informative, eye opening, and thought provoking book, because the author pulls no punches and tells it like it is.

_The Delicacy and Strength of Lace_ is an incredibly moving exchange between two great American poets who only met briefly on two occasions: Wright heard Silko read from her work which initiated the correspondence; Silko visited Wright on his deathbed. In between they exchanged letters about their everyday existences, everything from Silko's rooster to the nature of another animal, the human animal. Wright's inititial letter told Silko of his high regard for her book, _Ceremony_ and it's importance and stature in American literature. The letters quickly take on the knowing, personal feel of two people who have known each other for years. The reader is drawn into their lives and, especially, their visions. I recently re-read the book, and once again found myself examining along with the writers the very heart and nature of our existence in this vale of tears. Fans of the poetry of either will find this exchange especially enlightening, but I came to it unfamiiliar with either and found its simplicity and yet its warmth and vision compelling. I often give it as a gift. My copy has been around the world. This is a book to read, relish and re-read. Most readers will probably move next to the works of these two wonderfully compassionate soulmates. Many of Silko's poems appear in the letters.

After the end of the Second World War, a number of African Americans, including many of our most talented intellectuals, decided that America was just not a sufficiently hospitable home. Those who could left for Europe. Many, landed in Paris, which provided a far more civilized society.

Literary giants like James Baldwin, Richard Wright and other intellectuals found a place where their worth was determined by things more significant than skin color. This is the story of their experiences.

Another book worth searching for.

It simply does not get better than this. Publius (Hamilton, Jay, Madison) wrote these essays to sell the ratification of the Constitution. They are still reference material for the US Supreme Court. Read and take these to heart if you wish to understand our government and Constitution.

This book is about the Imperial hotel built by Frank Lloyd Wright in Tokyo during the Meiji era. It has been quite famous after the Kanto Big Earthquake in 1923 because it was not collapsed by the earthquake.

From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright is a wonderful tribute to a great American poet. There is a haunting sadness and a lyrical beauty to James Wright's poetry, and the same can be said for the poems in this new collection, elegies and appreciations from many poets who knew him and from some who did not. Lovely in their own right, the poems are served well by an arrangement that seems to place them in conversation with one another. For example, Stanley Plumly's prose poem about the Annual James Wright Festival speaks of Galway Kinnell's sadness the year after Wright's death. Plumly's piece is followed by Kinnell's own, and justly famous, elegy to Wright. Many such effects occur throughout this collection, for which the editors are to be commended. The book is a must for James Wright lovers, and a good place to start for others who want to learn more about him and his relationship to his contemporaries.