Branch Will Not Break

'These poems are splendidly direct, magnificently simple; sometimes the phrasing is so elegantly obvious that the heart jumps at it.... This is a book which ought to be read at least three times, and then maybe once a month for as long as one lives. The first three readings are essential, if the reader is going to get much from these poems; the seem to make so few demands, they look so obvious, they are so subtle.' -- Hal Smith, Epoch

JAMES WRIGHT was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, in 1927. He was well known for his translations of such Spanish poets as Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo and for his poems about the Midwest. He received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1972 for his Collected Poems. Other books of his published by Wesleyan are Saint Judas, Shall We Gather at the River, and Above the River: The Complete Poems (co published with Farrar, Straus and Giroux). James Wright died on March 26, 1980, at the age of 52.