Franz Wright Selected Works

Wright's first collection.

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"), Wright's 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.

Limited edition of 250 numbered copies.

A collection of 21 poems that rip through the world-weary, grieving daily life of a poet and a man. Reflecting Homer's Odyssey, Franz Wright reports with the language of poetry the story of his life, the relationship to his father, to his wife and the world inside and outside of him. With delicacy he interns himself in those worlds, sometimes overwhelmed by nostalgia and sometimes illuminated with an underglow of joy, as in "Elizabeth's Eyes," or quiet happiness, as in "The Catfish." As a wise Telemachus he walks, reflects and expresses a sovereign balance of mind in "unseen supervision," "between time of ingestion and time of departure: undisturbed, unafraid, as all things are passing—the unknown bird spoke: who will remember? And why should I care? I had my time. I got to be here."