The Beforelife
by Franz Wright
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"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 show more 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"--From publisher description. show lessTags
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Wright's searing black humour is at the forefront in this collection of confessional poems chronicling his mental illness, addiction, and painful, glorious recovery. This is the best book I have by a living poet; he should have won the Pulitzer for this one.
there is some excellent stuff here. he is on the fence, one foot in the dark side and one in the light. illuminates what is is like to be an outsider. maybe i am not so crazy after all? or maybe i am...my favorite quote, "a strangerness that will always be with him sometimes cruel and often funny scared to death every so often for days on end" yup. that's about right.
Verbal Visions: This is a beautiful volume.
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25+ Works 776 Members
Franz Wright lives in Waltham, Massachusetts. Franz Wright (March 18, 1953 - May 14, 2015) was an American poet. He and his father James Wright are the only parent/child pair to have won the Pulitzer Prize in the same category. His collection of poems entitled, Walking to Martha's Vineyard, won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2004. Wright was born in show more Vienna, Austria. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1977. In 1996, Wright won the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Wright died of cancer at his home in Waltham, Massachusetts, in May 2015. Deborah Garrison, his longtime editor at Knopf, told the Los Angeles Times: "Franz wrote fearlessly about mental illness, addiction and loneliness as well as about faith and the unending beauty of his world, no matter how broken; he never wrote a line that wasn't fiercely important to him, musical, as witty as it was deadly serious." (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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