In 1963, Wright composed a twelve-line lyric to his hometown entitled "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio." A brief hymn to the working class, the poem accounts for the phenomenon of high school sports heroics. Almost like a verse essay, the first stanza introduces place and economic motivation in laborers who invest their dreams in gridiron hero worship. The second stanza contrasts the testosterone-driven hunger for winners and the excluded females. Levering on "Therefore," Wright concludes his brief treatise with the next generation, who "grow suicidally beautiful" by acting out an artificial valor in theatrical combat at "Shreve High football stadium."
Composed in the same year, "Having Lost My Sons, I Confront the Wreckage of the Moon: Christmas, 1960" (1963) is a stark, yet winsome elegy. As is typical of Wright, he identifies the time in the title and the setting — "on the South Dakota border" — in line two. The poem's tension mounts to a peak in lines 15 and 16 with "I am sick / Of it, and I go on." As though touring the gravesites of "Chippewas and Norwegians," the poet-speaker admires the moonlight, which dazzles the eye with points of light. In spiritual repose, like a mystical father of the nation's sons, he ponders "the beautiful white ruins / Of America."
