Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

James Wright, p. 289

I love how Wright uses the football stadium as his triggering subject. He takes the experience of being in a football stadium and uses its related meanings to talk about his generated subject, which is the relationships random people have, but who are in fact connected by a general mode of thought or being. The whole poem seems jumbled and confusing, and its words seem strange until you take a step back and realize that the author wants to show that though people are diverse and each person is unique, all separated and categorized but internally have the same emotions and struggles.

I don’t think that Wright had any idea of what the eventual generated subject would because when I first read “In the Shreve Hall football stadium,” none of the next lines in the stanza would seem to fit. The last line in the stanza “Dreaming of heroes” feels like the only one that could be connected to his first line because football could lead you to think about your football idol who in turn is a hero.

I also admire how Wright is able to turn the idea football, a generally male-dominated, gut feeling, and generally happy type of game onto its head. Its used it to talk about the darker things in life. He touches on suicide, nagging mothers, and ashamed fathers, which I feel is really a lot to make your reader think about in simply three stanzas.