Elegy in a Firelit Room

Nearly 20 years ago, I fell in love with a poem by Franz Wright called, “On the Death of a Cat.” I’ve shared it more than once with friends who have lost pets because of its affectionate vulnerability.

Last fall, while meandering about the Poetry Foundation’s website, I became intrigued by a poet named James Wright, and tumbled down an internet rabbit hole about him. When a blog post about James Wright mentioned his son, Franz, things started clicking like Newton’s Cradle. The cat poem I’d loved for years was by a poet with a pedigree!

James Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems, so I added it to my Christmas list immediately. Thankfully, someone read my Christmas list and put Collected Poems under the tree for me ❤️

It didn’t take long for me to decide James Wright is a favorite poet. Often, his poems ache with beauty. Some are positively dream-like. In “The Shadow and the Real,” for instance, he talks about a woman standing in a doorway with the sun behind her. But his description transforms the moment into something visionary, almost spiritual. Even more striking is the fact that Wright reaches such heights using rather plain language—as if Jacob’s ladder was just the a-frame you’d find in your shed.

While other poems piqued my interest in Wright, “Elegy in a Firelit Room” was the first to hook me. Like “The Shadow and the Real,” this poem describes something mundane—a child looking out the window on a winter day. But Wright’s treatment of the subject causes the reader to hover between dream and reality.

One critical thing to understanding the poem is that the child sees his reflection in the window as he’s looking at the scene outside. (It took me a couple readings to get that). The reflection set against the backdrop of the winter landscape contributes to the dream-like quality of the poem.

I hope that you’ll take a few minutes to read “Elegy in a Firelit Room,” especially if Wright is unknown to you. It’s not long, and well worth a minute of reading time.