Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry Ohio

"Autumn Begins" was published in The Branch Will Not Break (1963), which was considered the first volume of Wright's poetry where he broke from the traditional iambic pentameter poetry of the time and began using more direct and forceful language in free verse (Bly 543;Walzer 469). There is no rhyming in this poem, although there is an internal rhythm caused by the line breaks and punctuation, so that each line receives an equal measure of weight, especially as seen in lines 1-5 and line 9.

The first stanza, although it is 5 lines long, is really only one sentence, indicating that it is one thought, broken down into separate pieces. While the title has placed the poem in a small town in Ohio, the first line more specifically places the action in a football stadium, which as Davis points out, takes this poem from being regional to more universal, as people gather in football stadiums in small towns all over the United States every autumn (354). The next three lines list the people who liv