James Wright's Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Ohio

James Wright’s poem “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” was published in 1963, and like many of his other works, points focus toward the nature of human life in the Rust Belt region of America. The open form poem follows a narrator's thoughts of his immediate and regional surroundings while watching a high school football game. Within the Rust Belt, poverty was common due to the after effects of the Great Depression and the decline in mining, and sports were one of the ways that children of impoverished families were able to escape the area if they were good enough to secure a spot on a college team. One may look at this poem as the football game providing a mental escape for the parents and townspeople, and hope for the sons to make
The author draws attention to this idea”Shreve High football stadium,” (). When thinking of Tiltonsville, the narrator comments that he/she thinks of “...Polacks nursing long beers…” (). The diction of the sentence delivers an expanded understanding of the people the narrator is considering. For example, the are “nursing” the beer, giving rise to the idea of self-medication. The idea of “nursing” the beer also nods to the notion that they are taking their time, and saving every drop in order to save money. Therefore, the activity of drinking is a way for these people to escape or aid their bleak lives, yet they still lack the resources to sufficiently do so. With the next town, Benwood, the narrator considers the “...gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace…”(). By turning from escapist activity to a job, the author draws focus to the conditions of their livelihood. The monochromatic display of “gray faces” is telling to the tired lives of these individuals. The lack of color on their faces, presumably due to soot, figuratively demonstrates that their lives also lack color. Thus, their jobs take away a vivacity of spirit making them empty souls trucking on with the day to day. In the last town of Wheeling Steel the narrator describes a specific individual, a “ruptured night watchman” (). At first glance, the adjective ruptured doesn’t appear to fit with describing the individual, however, picking apart the idea that the night watchman is one watching time leads to a notion that time is broken, and there is no end to the night. Symbolically, the idea of broken time contributes to the overall idea that poverty is neverending and cyclical. Lastly, the narrator states that all the individuals described are “dreaming of heroes.” () The word choice of “dreaming” is further indicative of the idea of mental escapism, because real escapism