Jay Wright (poet)

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Jay Wright (born 1934) is an African-American poet, playwright and essayist. Born in New Mexico,^[1][2] he currently lives in Bradford, Vermont. Although his work is not as widely known as other American poets of his generation, it has received considerable critical acclaim. Wright's work is emblematic of what the Guyanese-British writer Wilson Harris has termed the "cross-cultural imagination."

Over the years he has been poet in residence at Yale University as well as historically Black colleges and universities such as Talledega University, Tougaloo University, Texas Southern University, and the University of Dundee.

Contents 1 Early Years 2 Bibliography 3 Awards 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Early Years

Wright played professional baseball before studying comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley and Rutgers University.^[3] In the 1960s, he befriended fellow African-American author Henry Dumas, who died in New York City in 1968, and later wrote the introduction to Dumas's Play Ebony, Play Ivory: Poetry

[edit] Bibliography

• Death as History (pamphlet), 1967
• The Homecoming Singer,^[4] 1971
• Soothsayers and Omens, 1976
• The Double Invention of Komo, 1980
• Explications/Interpretations, 1984
• Dimensions of History, 1984
• Elaine's Book, 1986
• Selected Poems (Robert B. Stepto, editor, with an afterword by Harold Bloom), 1987
• Boleros, 1991

In 2000, Wright's first several books were collected in a single volume, entitled Transfigurations: Collected Poems, which also included new poems. In 2007, he published Music's Mask and Measure and The Guide Signs: Book One and Book Two. In addition, he published his play Balloons: A Comedy in One Act in 1968 and has published others in literary journals.

[edit] Awards

Wright has won many awards for his work, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship in 1986, the prestigious Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets in 1996; the 2005 Bollingen Prize in Poetry, becoming the first African-American writer to be so honored; and the 2006 American Book Award Lifetime Achievement Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Bollingen Prize website
• Book Review: Transfigurations
• Jay Wright's poetry focus of symposium at Washington University
• Jay Wright Poetry Reading at Columbia College