Synopses & Reviews
In his tenth collection of poetry, Franz Wright gives us an exquisite book of reconciliation with the past and acceptance of what may come in the future.
From his earliest years, he writes in “Will,” he had “the gift of impermanence / so I would be ready, / accompanied / by a rage to prove them wrong / . . . and that I too was worthy of love.” This rage comes coupled with the poets own brand of love, what he calls “one / strange alone / hearts wish / to help all / hearts.” Poetry is indeed Wrights help, and he delivers it to us with a wry sense of the daily in America: in his wonderfully local relationship to God (whom he encounters along with a catfish in the emerald shallows of Walden Pond); in the little West Virginia motel of the title poem, on the banks of the great Ohio River, where “Tammy Wynettes on the marquee” and he is visited by the figure of Walt Whitman, “examining the tear on a dead face.”
Here, in Wheeling Motel, Wrights poetry continues to surprise us with its frank appraisal of our soul, and with his own combustible loneliness and unstoppable joy.
Synopsis
In his 10th collection of poetry, Wright gives readers an exquisite book of reconciliation with the past and acceptance of what may come in the future.
About the Author
Franz Wrights recent works include Earlier Poems, Gods Silence, and The Beforelife (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). In 2004 his Walking to Marthas Vineyard received the Pulitzer Prize. He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, among other honors. He currently lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, with his wife, the translator and writer Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright.