At the Executed Murderer’s Grave (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: James Wright
- First Published: 1958
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Crime or criminals, Murder or homicide, Capital punishment, Death or dying, Good and evil, Tombs or graves, Cemeteries
The Poem
“At the Executed Murderer’s Grave” is composed of seventy-seven lines of freely rhymed iambic pentameter. The title expresses the subject. The poet is meditating on the grave of the convicted murderer George Doty, a taxi driver from Belaire, Ohio. Doty drove a girl out of town, made a pass at her, and, when she resisted, killed her. In an interview with Dave Smith (in The Pure Clear Word: Essays on the Poetry of James Wright, 1982, edited by Smith), Wright explains, “Many people in that community thought [Doty] was terribly wicked, but he did not seem to...
[The entire page is 1608 words long]
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