Dr. Ben Wright is Professor of English at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. He earned his Ph.D. from Anglia Polytechnic University in England. Dr. Wright previously taught with the University of Maryland’s European Division.
2006 0-7734-5909-X Examines and evaluates the accessibility of McGough’s message to a wide, general readership, as well as appraising it by the most rigorous literary standards, and to challenge and answer the notion that his popularity and commercial success indicate lack of intellectual integrity. Rather than addressing his association with musical groups, or his appearances on stage, or television and radio performances, attention will be focused on publication and readings of his serious poetry, even in some of the children’s collections, but primarily in the more penetrating social satires such as Summer with Monika, Holiday on Death Row and more recently in Blazing Fruit, The Way Things Are, and Everyday Eclipses.