Spanning four decades of writing—and including never-before-seen poems—The Essential C.D. Wright carries the reverence and wisecracking lyricism of poems that reshaped American poetry.
The Essential C.D. Wright gathers rare selections across the famed poet's entire oeuvre—from the first book, Alla Breve Loving (1976), through to ShallCross, which was in production at the time of her unexpected death in 2016. Tracing a writing life that spans more than four decades, this essential collection illuminates works that remain empowered by an unrelenting independence, a reverence for mentors, and wry, wisecracking lyricism. A formally restless, energetic, uncompromising, and utterly unique voice, C.D. Wright introduced a contemporary audience to the promise and power of docupoetics, while pushing the musical boundaries of vernacular speech and reshaping American poetry. With a moving introduction by Forrest Gander, this volume cements C.D. Wright's place in the literary canon.
About the Author :
Born on the Epiphany and raised in the Ozarks, C.D. Wright's (1949–2016) experimental, ethnographic voice established her as one of her generation's most influential poets. Traveling throughout the U.S. and Mexico, coming to live with Forrest Gander, Wright consistently resolved to “sharpen" the Arkansas in her, remaining committed to her Southern roots. Through lyric, Wright's work critically investigated and examined American physical and human geographies, and maintained a close relationship to those who peopled her life. Recognized with fellowships from the MacArthur, Lannan, the Guggenheim foundations, and many others, organizations have established awards in her name, a testament to her immeasurable contributions to the literary landscape. Publishing sixteen collections of poetry and prose, serving on the faculty at Brown University for decades, and editing Lost Road Publishers, Wright, according to The New York Times, “belongs to a school of exactly one."
Forrest Gander was born in the Mojave Desert and lives in California. He taught at Harvard University and Brown University. Gander is a translator and the author of many books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. He has received a Pulitzer Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Whiting, and United States Artists Foundations.
Michael Wiegers has been editing books for Copper Canyon Press since 1993, and currently serves as the Press's Executive Editor & Artistic Director. Most recently, he edited two anthologies of Copper Canyon Press poetry: A House Called Tomorrow: 50 Years of Poetry and Come Shining: More Poems and Stories from Fifty Years of Copper Canyon Press. He is also the poetry editor of Narrative magazine and edited What About This: The Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Essential W.S. Merwin. He is currently at work on a book about the poet W.S. Merwin and serves as a trustee for the Merwin Conservancy.
Review :
Praise for The Essential C.D. Wright
“The best solution to date to the problem of Wright's genius and abundance."—Christopher Spaide, Lit Hub
“The Essential C. D. Wright brings together poems selected from across the author's many books as well as unpublished poems and drafts, including lovely hauntings like 'The great nothing was there. Always. / Listen, Trespasser.' In the introduction, Forrest Gander writes of living together for over three decades, 'she was not for one minute uninteresting. Or uninterested.' Wright's desirous, interested, wild eye is more present here than in any other single volume."—Poetry Northwest
“The brilliant and multitalented Wright (Casting Deep Shade) died unexpectedly in 2016, leaving behind a legacy of astonishing breadth. This comprehensive and riveting volume, lovingly selected by the poet's husband, Forrest Gander, and her longtime friend and editor Michael Wiegers, serves both the ardent fan and the newcomer to her work. Wright's commitment to wonder and witness runs throughout like an iron wire, revealing a logic made newly legible by this collection: 'Something is out there/ goddammit// And I want to hear it,' she writes in midlife. Twenty years later, she refines her aim 'to unequivocally lay out the real feel of hard time.' Readers will observe the poet's deepening practice of documentary poetics, from early lyric portraits of family, friends, and strangers in and beyond her Arkansas home ('some boys holed up in a derelict house/ after stoning a swan to death') to book-length poems that combine voices in 'a welter of associations.' Attuned especially to the poor and disenfranchised, the victims of racialized violence, and the incarcerated, these poems strive to represent people 'as they elect to be seen, in their larger selves.' It's a thrilling assemblage of Wright's unforgettable writings."—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
“Whether you've followed the work of C.D. Wright for years or are encountering it for the first time, this condensation of decades is rich, like that 94% dark chocolate you allow yourself only on special occasions. The Essential C.D. Wright, selected and edited by her partner, Forrest Gander, and editor, Michael Wiegers, provides the breadth of a single poet's career all under one cover, leaving it up to the reader when to take breaks to breathe. Savoring is necessary."—Stan Galloway, Bear Review
“Featuring cinematic jump cuts and jazzlike improvisations, moments of microscopic precision giving way to metaphysical abstraction, Wright's poetry sparks between a tangible, earthbound reality and something harder to pin down, caught between 'the human dimension' of our lived experience and the 'existential drift' of memory and imagination ('End Thoughts'). At times, Wright's poetry seems almost photographic in its clarity, presenting intimate snapshots of a world of people and their treasured things, setting words down on the white space of the paper like objects on a tablecloth. . . . Like all photography, Wright's work asserts a quality of preservation, holding something back, as though a trace of the figure or object in question were suspended in the poem itself, 'not the words,' exactly, but 'the substance' ('Light Bulb Poem')."—Rowland Bagnall, Los Angeles Review of Books
“The Essential C.D. Wright is—an almost too indulgent—privilege to hold and read and reread. This remarkably curated constellation of poems invites us to question the responsibilities and the capacities of both the poet and the reader."—Amelia Sage Van Donsel, Little Mirror
Praise for C. D. Wright
“For a long while now, C. D. Wright has been writing some of the greatest poetry-cum-prose you can find in American literature"—Dave Eggers, The New York Times Book Review
“[Wright's poems] are always smart, sometimes elliptical, frequently strange."—Daisy Fried, The New York Times
“For me C.D. Wright's poetry is river gold."—Michael Ondaatje
“We need C.D. Wright's poems . . . and luckily we still have them."—Craig Morgan Teicher, Los Angeles Times
“C.D. Wright's work is plain gorgeous; it is clean-wrought, rich, rambunctious, and pure-thrown, like a perfect game. This is the generous art of a graceful outlaw troubadour, singing to us as if from within ourselves."—International Shortlist, Griffin Poetry Prize
“Casting Deep Shade is clarion call and corrective, immersing readers in the infinite pleasures of trees as well as the hazards posed by our careless, endless materialism, a view of the forest that sees condos and golf courses rather than habitats for spiders and sparrows."—The Kenyon Review
“Experimental, challenging and immediately appealing, Wright has a core of fans but could have many more."—Publishers Weekly
“Wright shrinks back from nothing."—Albert Mobilio, Voice Literary Supplement
