I found David Nemeth's July 15 entry, "Tough Guy Poets," including a stupid exchange between Franz Wright and William Logan, especially interesting.
My sweetheart/wife, Laurie Schneider, went to Oberlin a couple years behind Franz Wright. I've maintained an acquaintance with his work, then, for over twenty-five years, as I do for other poets associated with Oberlin and/or Field, e.g. David Young, David Walker, Bruce Beasley, and Charles Wright. His work has always been safe, a breeze to read -- transparent, personal lyricism -- the kind of poem that fits comfortably in the palm of the mind, poetry for Pleasantville. The kind of poetry as a high school teacher I will browse just in case Kym who hates poetry so much she sucks the air out of the room when the word is mentioned might find one of these poems worth reading twice. And then read another poem without stealing the air around her. I'd rather she read Fanny Howe's Gone or or or or... but I know readers of poetry have to start walking with one poem, any poem, before they start running with Coolidge or Mullen or Spahr or or or...
The last few weeks, I've spent a couple hours every afternoon at the university reading Vygotsky and/or Bakhtin (lit review for a doctorate I'm inching toward). For a break, I browse the literature stacks. Pleased by C. D. Wright's selected poems Steal Away (what the hell school is she lumped into? Certainly not that infamous school of quietude), I went looking for more. I stumbled upon Franz Wright's Walking to Martha's Vineyard, sandwiched between Charles and James.
Although it's undoubtedly debatable whether the book is worthy of the Pulitizer Prize or any prize for that matter, I would argue it's a hair-raising departure -- a swerve -- for him. These poems are ugly (read the insipid, misleading commentary by Random House linked above), grovelling in form and content, lines stuttering or swerving or stopping dead with no connection to the line above or below. (I'd give a sample but I return the book to the shelf each day. But, forgive me, when the book's out in paperback, I'll buy it.) This is the kind of style-shift that makes me want to watch his subsequent work. Unlike many of his peers, I sense he doesn't know where he's going, what's next. I find that compelling as hell.
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