Works by
Franz Wright
(Poet)
[March 18, 1953 - ]

Poetry

• Earlier Poems (2007)
  The haunting collection of poems that gathers the first four books of Pulitzer winner Franz Wright under one cover.

• God's Silence (2006)
  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 accomplished
  even 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.

• Walking to Martha's Vineyard (2003)
  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.

• The Beforelife (2002)
  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.

• ill lit: Selected & New Poems (1998)
  Franz Wright's ill lit brings together a substantial selection of poems from earlier volumes, some of them significantly revised by the author, and a group of twenty-one new poems, along with a selection of translations. A courageous writer who has, in his words, committed himself to the task of "giving a voice to conditions or states of mind normally associated with speechlessness," Franz Wright demonstrates here, again and again, his ability to make poems that are haunting, somber, and luminous.

• The Night World and the Word Night (1993)

• Entry in an Unknown Hand (1991)

• Going North in Winter (1986)

• The One Whose Eyes Open When You Close Your Eyes (1982)

• 8 Poems (1982)

• The Earth Without You (1980)

• Tapping the White Cane of Solitude (1976)

Other

• American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006), David Walker, ed.
  Includes works by Agha Shahid Ali, Arthur Sze, Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Bob Hicok, Bruce Beasley, Bruce Weigl, C. D. Wright, Carl Phillips, Carol Muske-Dukes, David St. John, Franz Wright, Larry Levis, Lee Upton, Linda Bierds, Linda Gregerson, Marianne Boruch, Mark Doty, Mary Ruefle, Norman Dubie, Pamela Alexander, Rita Dove, Robin Behn, Susan Stewart, Thomas Lux, and Yusef Komunyakaa

• The Unknown Rilke: Expanded Edition (1991), Franz Wright, translator

See also:

• Liberty's Quest: The Compelling Story of the Wife and Mother of Two Poetry Pulitzer Prize Winners, James Wright & Franz Wright (2008) by Liberty Kovacs

• Biography - Franz Wright (2007)
  An article from: Contemporary Authors Online by Gale Reference Team, Digital - HTML