The Fourth-to-Last James Wright Poetry Festival, 2005 by Michael Simms

The Fourth-to-Last James Wright Poetry Festival, 2005

We were standing around talking
outside the Martins Ferry public library
when Ochester mentioned Creeley
had died. We stood on the sidewalk
silently. It started to rain. No one moved.
Four poets struck dumb by death
and rain. That’s the thing. Poets don’t write
because we have something to say.
We write because so little can be said.
Greenway gently asked whether Jack Gilbert
had Alzheimer’s. Linda Gregg trembled and looked down.
Rain turned to mist, so Greenway and I left, climbing the hill
to the cemetery that looks over the town
to the river I have no right to speak of
because James Wright owns the Ohio River,
the way Phil Levine owns the Chevrolet Gear and Axle Plant
and Jack Gilbert holds title to the Greek island of Paros
where he and Linda shared a home. Even now
forty years dead and buried in the fucking Bronx,
James Wright still owns the river and its shores
where he grew up near slag heaps,
black trees and stool-washed water
carrying chemicals from the now-shuttered factories
of Wheeling Steel, Blaw Knox and Hazel-Atlas Glass Company
where his dad worked fifty years as a die-cutter.
Jimmy wore out the cardboard soles
in his winter boots. Growing up in a rat-hole
means he can be buried anywhere he wants,
if he still wants. As for me, his poems flow into my life
not as feeling but fact, the way a river absorbs rain.
But being James Wright was a real job,
I bet. Drinking helped. Maybe self-loathing helped
as well. Who knows? But he knew the anger of blast furnaces
and the desperation of the hobos along the Mississippi
in Minneapolis just before they jumped. And yet
he grew tired of darkness because he understood
if poetry means anything, it’s a disturbance we feel
with all our senses, even the unexpected ones
in the hell and happiness of our lives.

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Michael Simms’s latest poetry collection is Cities I Can Never Return To (Ragged Sky Press, 2026). His latest novel is The Hummingbird War (Madville Fantasy, 2026). Born and raised in Texas, Simms has lived in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh for almost 40 years. In 2011, the Pennsylvania Legislature recognized him for his contribution to the arts.