So Much Secret Labor: James Wright and Translation

How a passion for translation fueled the development of a great American poet

So Much Secret Labor is a window into the work of the great American poet, James Wright (1927-1980), whose love of languages and quest for the ＂true imagination＂ helped transform American poetry. The book draws on memoir, archival research, interviews, letters, and previous unpublished journal excerpts, presenting a scrupulous and intimate reading of Wright’s work and the translations he insisted were as redemptive in his life as they were crucial to his poetics. At its center is a selection of Wright’s translations, both from German and Spanish: poems by Trakl, Rilke, Heine, Vallejo, Lorca, and Neruda, among others, including draft versions discovered among his collected papers that have never been published. It also provides an important assessment of the little known formative influence of German poetry on Wright’s own poems. Wright’s literary relationship with another great mid-century American poet, Robert Bly, is featured here in a portfolio of unpublished letters, typescripts and holographs. These tell the story of their ardent friendship and earliest translation collaborations, and situates them in the history of the emergence of poetry of the ＂true imagination＂ that they were beginning to explore at that time.

ANNE WRIGHT is the editor of Above the River: The Complete Poems by James Wright (1992); and co-editor of A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright (2005). SAUNDRA ROSE MALEY was an Adjunct Professor of English at Montgomery College, author of Solitary Apprenticeship: James Wright and German Poetry (1996) and co-editor of A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright (2005). JEFF KATZ was the Vice President of Information Services and Director of Libraries, and Executive Director, Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, at Bard College and co-editor of Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2010).