Youth
Poem By James Wright
Flyer By Kennedy Boyer
Poets Bio: James Arlington Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio. His father worked for a glass factory for fifty years, and his mother left school at fourteen to work in a laundry ; neither attended school beyond the eighth grade. While in high school in 1943 Wright suffered a nervous Breakdown and missed a year of school he modeled his writing after Thomas Harding and Robert Frost.
Words from the poem you may not know
Toiled- means struggled
Girder- means beams of wood
(slang term) Honyak- white trash
Whittling - shaping wood
The Ohio River
This picture reminds me of the section where he says "I know his ghost will drift home/ To the Ohio River, and sit down, alone,/ Whittling a root."
Actual Hazel Atlas Glass
This picture reminds me of the section where he says "My father toiled fifty years/At Hazel-Atlas Glass/ caught among girders that smash the kneecaps/ of dumb honyaks."
A dark shaddow
This picture remind me of of the part in the poem where he wrote, "He came home as quiet as the evening./ He will be getting dark, soon,/ And loom through new snow."
The Poem
Strange bird,
His song remains secret.
He worked too hard to read books.
He never heard how Sherwood Anderson
Got out of it, and fled to Chicago, furious to free himself
From his hatred of factories.
My father toiled fifty years
At Hazel-Atlas Glass,
Caught among girders that smash the kneecaps
Of dumb honyaks.
Did he shudder with hatred in the cold shadow of grease?
Maybe. But my brother and I do know
He came home as quiet as the evening.
He will be getting dark, soon,
And loom through new snow.
I know his ghost will drift home
To the Ohio River, and sit down, alone,
Whittling a root.
He will say nothing.
The waters flow past, older, younger
Than he is, or I am.