F
Poems
Franz Wright is at his best in this beautiful and startling collection. In these riveting poems, as he considers his mortality, the poet finds a new elation and clarity on the page, handing over for our examination the flawed yet kneeling-in-gratitude self he has become.
Wright declares, “I’ve said all that / I had to say. / In writing. / I signed my name. / It’s death’s move.”
F stands both for Franz, the poet-speaker who represents all of us on our baffling lifelong journeys, and for the alphabet, the utility and sometimes brutality of our symbols. (It may be, he jokes grimly, his “grade in life.”) From “Entries of the Cell,” the long central poem that details the loneliness of…
$30.99
January 12, 2016
Franz Wright was born in Vienna, Austria in 1953 and grew up in the Northwest, the Midwest, and northern California. His works include The Beforelife (2001), Walking to Martha’s Vineyard (2003), God’s Silence (2006), Earlier Poems (2007), Wheeling Motel (2009), Kindertotenwald (2011), and F (2013). He was the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, and a Pulitzer Prize for Walking to Martha’s Vineyard. Wright, who was the son of the poet James Wright, died in 2015.