Author: Franz Wright File Type: epub In this stunning collection, Franz Wright chronicles the journey back from a place of isolation and wordlessness. After a period when it seemed certain he would never write poetry again, he speaks with bracing clarity about the twilit world that lies between madness and sanity, addiction and recovery. Wright negotiates the precarious transition from illness to health in a state of skeptical rapture, discovering along the way the exhilaration of love--both divine and human--and finding that even the most battered consciousness can be good company. Whether he is writing about his regret for the abortion of a child, describing the mechanics of slander (I can just hear them on the telephone and keening all their kissy little knives), or composing an ironic ode to himself (To a Blossoming Nut Case), Wrights poems are exquisitely precise. Charles Simic has characterized him as a poetic miniaturist, whose secret ambition is to write an epic on the inside of a matchbook cover. Time and again, Wright turns on a dime in a few brief lines, exposing the dark comedy and poignancy of his heightened perception. Here is one of the poems from the collection Description of Her Eyes Two teaspoonfuls, and my mind goes everyone can kiss my ass now-- then its changed, I change my mind. Eyes so sad, and infinitely kind. From the Hardcover edition. **From Publishers Weekly The six books that Wright published in the 90s were more or less split between Carnegie-Mellon University and Oberlin College presses, with the latter publishing Ill Lit Selected Poems to little fanfare in 1998. Clearly, however, Knopf editor Deborah Garrison was paying attention, having made Wrights 13th collection her first for the house since taking over for the late Harry Ford last year. The poems here slowly make explicit a psychologically acute back story, featuring Haldol, codeine, drinking and childhood abuse. (Wrights father was the late poet James Wright.) They depend almost completely on a pared-down, querulous, alternatingly grandiose and self-deflating depression-speak, which can be terrific when on, and much less impressive when even slightly off. A laconic rhythm drives self-revelations like Not Now This mask this glove of human flesh is all I have and thats not bad and thats not good not good enough not now. But too many of these short monologues cant sustain their self-reflection, as in Primogeniture, which opens My dad beat me with his belt for my edification and closes may my hand whither may it forget how to write if I ever strike a child. Single lines and thoughts can be better than whole poemsADark the computer dies in its sleep ...so you are not going to hurt me again and I, I cant happen to you Ill give you something to cry aboutAgiving this uneven collection depth and credibility. (Jan. 31) 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review This luminous, courageous book is about all of us--about our daily torment and redemption, which we dare not speak even to our souls. But Wright has done so. --Olga Broumas, author of Rave Poems, 1975-1999 These poems break me theyre like jewels shaped by blunt, ruined fingers--miraculous gifts. At any one time only a handful of genuine poets reside on the planet. I consider Franz Wright to be one of these, and Im grateful that we have him among us. ---Denis Johnson Writers who are genuinely original, who beat their own path, make up a kind of visionary company, to which Franz Wright, with this new book, must clearly be admitted. These poems seem haunted by their own dark imaginings, yet at surprising moments turn all of a sudden humorous, if mordantly so. Reading them will train readers to stay alert for whatever devastating surprises may be coming up next. ---Donald Justice In a language waking from delirium, these astonishing poems offer---in their spare, raw, and pure lyric clarity---the prayers of madness and the light of its aftermath. Wright is a poet apart in his gifts and his courage. ---Carolyn Forche Intriguing and always accessible, with no irrelevant lies, this book will expand the audience for poetry by showing readers that, in spite of stunning obstacles, it is always possible to live. --Library Journal In these short meditations of anguish and hope, Wright achieves the clarity of seeing, and a hard-won wisdom as well.--Kirkus Reviews Beforelife the word is so striking that the halting suspence of a double-crostic puzzle overhangs the book, as each poem individually withholds final definition. These poems brilliantly duplicate the willfulness and self-spite of the drinkers impulse ... theyre mostly miniatures, the beginnings or endings o...

Author: Sean O'Brien File Type: epub Each poem in Sean OBriens superb new collection opens on a wholly different room, vista or landscape, each drawn with the poets increasingly refined sense of tone, history and rhetorical assurance. The Beautiful Librarians is a stock-taking of sorts, and a celebration of those unsung but central figures in our culture, often overlooked by both capital and official account. Here we find infantrymen, wrestlers, old lushes in the hotel bar - but none more heroic than the librarians of the title, those silent and silencing guardians of literature and knowledge who, the poet reminds us, also had lives of their own to be celebrated. Elsewhere we find a 12-bar blues sung by Ovid, a hymn to a grey rose, a writing course from hell, and a very French exercise in waiting. A book of terrific variety of theme and form, The Beautiful Librarians is another bravura performance from the most garlanded English poet of his generation. **