Franz Wright
On Franz Wright
by J. Zimmerman
Franz Wright.
F.
God's Silence.
Kindertotenwald.
Walking to Martha's Vineyard.
Wheeling Motel.
Links.
Books.
Franz Wright featured in
The Best American Poetry: 2006,
Editor Billy Collins.
Franz Wright
Franz Wright, author of over 16 poetry books and 5 books of translation
(primarily of Rainer Maria Rilke),
won the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
Walking to Martha's Vineyard
won the
2004 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
His first book was
Tapping the White Cane of Solitude (l976).
Astonishingly,
not till 2006,
did his work appear in
The Best American Poetry Series.
F / poems
F / poems was published in 2013.
Published in three section. The middle of the three is particularly remarkable,
a long poem called "Entries of the Cell":
There are two infinities. Can't you see them?
Don't ask me how it works — one of star-sown space, and one of
the words for it.
I only know it was like living twice.
[p. 29]
Copyright © 2013 by Franz Wright.
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The third and final section has shorter poems, some excellent including:
"Learning How to Read":
If I had to look up every fifth or sixth word
so what. I looked them up.
I had nowhere important to be.
My father was unavailable, and my mother
looked like she was about to break,
and not into blossom, each time I spoke.
My favorite was The Iliad. True,
I had trouble pronouncing the names;
but when was I going to pronounce them, and
to whom? ...
... Life has taught me
to understand books.
[p. 51-52]
Copyright © 2013 by Franz Wright.
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The concluding "Three Basho Haibun" [pp.76-78]
seem over-optimistically named, there being so much more ego in Wright's poems than
in
Bashō's.
Kindertotenwald (2011)
God's Silence
God's Silence was published in 2006.
This book is a mixed bag.
Many poems seemingly attempt to
romanticize Wright's battle with mental health and with God.
They seem self-indulgent poems and often unsurprising.
However there are several astounding poems, particularly:
- "A Successful Day (Fill in the Blanks)" [p. 132]
- "Everyone's Elegy" [p. 47]
- "Poet's Room in a Museum" [p. 115]
- "The Choice" [p. 119]
- "The Reader" [p. 44]
- "The Walk" [p. 76-77]
Acknowledges first publications in:
- Agni Review
- Bat City Review
- Boston College Magazine
- Colorado Review
- Daedelus
- Field
- Five Points
- Fugue
- Image
- LIT
- Literary Imagination
- Nebraska Review
- The New Yorker
- New York Quarterly
- Passport
- Salmagundi
- Slope
- Typo
- Vallum
Walking to Martha's Vineyard
Walking to Martha's Vineyard is
published in 2003.
This book is a blessing of amazing poems -- poems that met Emily Dickinson's test, for they
take off the top of my head. This book is the deserving winner of
the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Structure:
The book has 53 poems. They are not grouped into sections.
The title of the penultimate poem is used as the title of the book.
Wheeling Motel (2009)
- 55 poems; 87 pages; 1.6 pp/ poem
- Pre-poems includes a translation (his?) of a Basho:
A traveler,
let that be my name.
The first winter rain
- Opening poem (p.3) is "Another Working Dawn" and includes the wonderful line:
And let's get one thing straight, they were never about.
- Also good (p.8) is:
Day One
Good morning class. Today
we're going to be discussing
the deplorable adventures
of Franz Wright and his gory flute.
Just kidding. The topic this morning
is an unparaphrasable logic constructed
from parallelisms and images
and held together, on
occasion, by nothing
but the magical non sequitur-
but the hell with that.
We should really examine
your life, the one you bought,
and what happened when you got home
and attempted to assemble it:
that disfiguring explosion
no one witnessed, no one heard,
which you yourself cannot recall,
and by whose unimaginable light you seek
to write the name of beauty.
- Also good (pp.12-13) is:
Intake Interview
What is today's date?
Who is the President?
How great a danger do you pose, on a scale of one to ten?
What does "people who live in glass houses" mean?
Every symphony is a suicide postponed, true or false?
Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the
avalanche?
Name five rivers.
What do you see yourself doing in ten minutes?
How about some lovely soft Thorazine music?
If you could have half an hour with your father, what would you
say to him?
What should you do if I fall asleep?
Are you still following in his mastodon footsteps?
What is the moral of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"?
What about his Everest shadow?
Would you compare your education to a disease so rare no one
else has ever had it, or the deliberate extermination
of indigenous populations?
Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent
absence?
Should an odd number be sacrificed to the gods of the sky, and an
even to those of the underworld, or vice versa?
Would you visit a country where nobody talks?
What would you have done differently?
Why are you here?
Poems Copyright
© 2004-2016 by Franz Wright.
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Time Line
- 1953.
- Born in Vienna, Austria.
- 1977.
- Graduated from Oberline College with a B.A.
- 2001.
- Poetry book:
The Before Life.
- 2003.
- Poetry book:
Walking to Martha's Vineyard.
- 2003.
- Pulitzer Prize for:
Walking to Martha's Vineyard.
- 2006.
- Poetry book:
God's Silence.
- 2009.
- Publication of
Wheeling Motel.
- 2011.
- Publication of
Kindertotenwald.
- 2012.
- Publication of
Buson: Haiku,
a collection of translations of thirty haiku by the Japanese
poet Yosa Buson.
- 2013.
- Publication of verse and prose poems: F.
- Recorded fifteen prose poems from
Kindertotenwald.
- 2015.
- Died (cancer).
Links
Books.
[Thanks for visiting.]
Copyright
© 2004-2017 by J. Zimmerman.
Poems Copyright
© 2004-2016 by Franz Wright.
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