A Way to Make a Living

By James Wright 1927–1980 James Wright

From an epigram by Plato

When I was a boy, a relative

Asked for me a job

At the Weeks Cemetery.

Think of all I could

Have raised that summer,

That money, and me

Living at home,

Fattening and getting

Ready to live my life

Out on my knees, humming,

Kneading up docks

And sumac from

Those flawless clerks-at-court, those beautiful

Grocers and judges, the polished

Dead of whom we make

So much.

I could have stayed there with them.

Cheap, too.

Imagine, never

To have turned

Wholly away from the classic

Cold, the hill, so laid

Out, measure by seemly measure clipped

And mown by old man Albright

The sexton. That would have been a hell of

A way to make a living.

Thank you, no.

I am going to take my last nourishment

Of measure from a dark blue

Ripple on swell on ripple that makes

Its own garlands.

My dead are the secret wine jars

Of Tyrian commercial travelers.

Their happiness is a lost beginning, their graves

Drift in and out of the Mediterranean.

One of these days

The immortals, clinging to a beam of sunlight

Under water, delighted by delicate crustaceans,

Will dance up thirty-foot walls of radiance,

And waken,

The sea shining on their shoulders, the fresh

Wine in their arms. Their ships have drifted away.

They are stars and snowflakes floating down

Into your hands, love.

James Wright, “A Way to Make a Living” from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose. Copyright © 1990 by James Wright. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Source: Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose (1990)

Biography

James Wright was frequently referred to as one of America's finest contemporary poets. He was admired by critics and fellow poets alike for his willingness and ability to experiment with language and style, as well as for his thematic concerns. In the Minnesota Review, Peter A. Stitt wrote that Wright's work both represents and parallels the development of the best modern American poets: "Reading the Collected Poems of James . . .

Continue reading this biography