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Franz Wright, the son of the poet James Wright, was born in Vienna in 1953 and grew up in
the Northwest, the Midwest, and northern California. His most recent works include Ill Lit:
Selected & New Poems and an expanded edition of translations entitled The Unknown Rilke.
He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Whiting
Fellowship, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, among other honors. He lives in
Waltham, Massachusetts, with his wife, Elizabeth.
Photo: (c) Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright
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In this 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.
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