Bøker av Franz Wright

The haunting collection of poems that gathers the first four books of Pulitzer winner Franz Wright under one cover, where "fans old and new will find a feast amid famine” (Publishers Weekly), and discover how large this poet's gift was from the start.

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 poet’s own brand of love, what he calls “one / strange alone / heart’s wish / to help all / hearts.” Poetry is indeed Wright’s 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 Wynette’s on the marquee” and he is visited by the figure of Walt Whitman, “examining the tear on a dead face.”Here, in Wheeling Motel, Wright’s poetry continues to surprise us with its frank appraisal of our soul, and with his own combustible loneliness and unstoppable joy.

Franz Wright was recognized as one of the leading poets of his generation even before he won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. For this edition, the poet has selected from his previous collections, in some cases making substantial revisions, and has added his newest poems. The result is exciting in its breadth, consistency, depth, and distinction.

In this radiant new collection, Franz Wright shares his regard for life in all its forms and his belief in the promise of blessing and renewal. As he watches the "Resurrection of the little apple tree outside / my window,” he shakes off his fear of mortality, concluding "what death . . . There is only / mine / or yours,- / but the world / will be filled with the living.” In prayerlike poems he invokes the one "who spoke the world / into being” and celebrates a dazzling universe-snowflakes descending at nightfall, the intense yellow petals of the September sunflower, the planet adrift in a blizzard of stars, the simple mystery of loving other people. As Wright overcomes a natural tendency toward loneliness and isolation, he gives voice to his hope for "the only animal that commits suicide,” and, to our deep pleasure, he arrives at a place of gratitude that is grounded in the earth and its moods.

A collection of poetry by Franz Wright.

A collection of poetry by Franz Wright.

In this luminous new collection of poems, Franz Wright expands on the spiritual joy he found in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Walking to Martha's Vineyard. Wright, whom we know as a poet of exquisite miniatures, opens God's Silence with "East Boston, 1996,” a powerful long poem that looks back at the darker moments in the formation of his sensibility. He shares his private rules for bus riding ("No eye contact: the eyes of the terrified / terrify”), and recalls, among other experiences, his first encounter with a shotgun, as an eight-year-old boy ("In a clearing in the cornstalks . . . it was suggested / that I fire / on that muttering family of crows”). Throughout this volume, Wright continues his penetrating study of his own and our collective soul. He reaches a new level of acceptance as he intones the paradox "I have heard God's silence like the sun,” and marvels at our presumptions:We speak of Heaven who have not yet accomplishedeven this, the holiness of things precisely as they are, and never will!Though Wright often seeks forgiveness in these poems, his black wit and self-deprecation are reliably present, and he delights in reminding us that "literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry.”But in this book, literature wins as well. God's Silence is a deeply felt celebration of what poetry (and its silences) can do for us.