Franz Wright*

Franz Wright (1953—2015) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet — who, together with his father James Wright, are the only father/son pair to have both won the prize. His win was for the book Walking to Martha’s Vineyard (Knopf, 2003).

Ironically it was in part his feeling of abandonment by his father that led to his mental health struggles. In one interview he said,
-----“I reached a point, in my mid-40s, when I got so sick I could no
-----longer function. I was not able to write anymore. I despaired and
-----thought everything had failed me, even writing, which was the only
-----thing I felt I had going… God works through human beings. I don't
-----have any doubt about that. It horrifies me when I think of what
-----would have happened to me had my wife and I not gotten together.
-----It reminds me again that I'm not in control, that something else
-----made all this happen… [F]rom that point on I had a great desire to
-----become formally involved in the church. I always had an interest in
-----Christianity, and I studied it as an intellectual pursuit. I always
-----loved the New Testament as a work of art. The ‘something else’ was
-----a certain experience of the literalness of what the Bible said and the
-----literal grace in my life. It was the happiest time of my life, and
-----intensely miraculous.”

Although he has his detractors, Wright has been highly praised by several leading critics. In the New York Times Book Review, Langdon Hammer said of Wright’s God’s Silence (Knopf, 2006): “In his best poems, Wright grasps at the ‘radiantly obvious thing’ in short-lined short lyrics that turn and twist down the page. The urgency and calculated unsteadiness of the utterances, with their abrupt shifts of direction, jump-cuts and quips, mime the wounded openness of a speaker struggling to find faith.” And in the Huffington Post, Anis Shivani called Franz Wright’s 2013 book, F, among the best books of poetry yet produced by an American, and identified him as "our greatest contemporary poet."

The Raising of Lazarus

Adapted from the original notebook fragment written by Rainer Maria Rilke in Spain in 1913.

Evidently, this was needed. Because people need
to be screamed at with proof.
But he knew his friends. Before they were
he knew them. And they knew
that he would never leave them
there, desolate. So he let his exhausted eyes close
at first glimpse of the village fringed with tall fig
trees — 
immediately he found himself in their midst:
here was Martha, sister of the dead
boy. He knew
she would not stray,
as he knew which would;
he knew that he would always find her
at his right hand,
and beside her
her sister Mary, the one
a whole world of whores
still stood in a vast circle pointing at. Yes,
all were gathered around him. And once again
he began to explain
to bewildered upturned faces
where it was he had to go, and why.
He called them “my friends.” The Logos, God’s
creating word, — the same voice that said
Let there be light.
Yet
when he opened his eyes,
he found himself standing apart.
Even the two
slowly backing away, as though
from concern for their good name.
Then he began to hear voices;
whispering
quite distinctly,
or thinking:
Lord,
if you had been here
our friend might not have died.
(At that, he slowly reached out
as though to touch a face,
and soundlessly started to cry.)
He asked them the way to the grave.
And he followed behind them,
preparing
to do what is not done
to that green silent place
where life and death are one.
By then other Brueghelian grotesques
had gathered, toothlessly sneering
across at each other and stalled
at some porpoise or pig stage
of ontogenetical horrorshow, keeping
their own furtive shadowy distances
and struggling to keep up
like packs of limping dogs;
merely to walk down this road
in broad daylight
had begun to feel illegal,
unreal, rehearsal,
test — but for what!
And the filth of desecration
sifting down over him, as a feverish outrage
rose up, contempt
at the glib ease
with which words like “living”
and “being dead”
rolled off their tongues;
and loathing flooded his body
when he hoarsely cried,
“Move the stone!”
“By now the body must stink,”
some helpfully suggested. But it was true
that the body had lain in its grave four days.
He heard the voice as if from far away,
beginning to fill with that gesture
which rose through him: no hand that heavy
had ever reached this height, shining
an instant in air. Then
all at once clenching
and cramped — the fingers
shrunk crookedly
into themselves,
and irreparably fixed there,
like a hand with scars of ghastly
slashing lacerations
and the usual deep sawing
across the wrist’s fret,
through all major nerves,
the frail hair-like nerves — 
so his hand
at the thought
all the dead might return
from that tomb
where the enormous cocoon
of the corpse was beginning to stir.
Yet nobody stood there — 
only the one young man,
pale as though bled,
stooping at the entrance
and squinting at the light,
picking at his face, loose
strips of rotting shroud.
All that he could think of
was a dark place to lie down,
and hide that wasted body.
And tears rolled up his cheek
and back into his eyes,
and then his eyes began
rolling back into his head ...
     Peter looked across at Jesus
with an expression that seemed to say
You did it, or What have you done?
And everyone saw
how their vague and inaccurate
life made room for his once more.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Franz Wright: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of six poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), plus three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is now available from Paraclete Press.

Franz Wright*

Franz Wright (1953—2015) is an American poet who has written more than twenty books of poetry. He died of cancer on May 14th. He is best known for his collection Walking To Martha's Vineyard (2004) for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He and his father, the poet James Wright, have many things in common. Besides having both won the Pulitzer, Franz and his father were both victims of alcoholism, mental instability, and cancer — which took James Wright's life in 1980.

Drinking and drug abuse eventually led to Franz losing his job at Emerson College in Boston, and a downward spiral which included a suicide attempt. His life turned around in 1999 with his marriage to Elizabeth Oehlkers, his embracing of Christianity, and his successfully gaining a life of sobriety. The obituary in The New York Times describes him as a poet "whose work illuminated his passage from abiding despair to religious transcendence."

I am honoured to have received the following note from Franz Wright in 2011, in response to the Kingdom Poets post I wrote about him. It speaks to his vulnerability and of his struggles for success in his life and art:
-------"Just wanted to say that I came across your (marvelously) brief
-------discussion of me, me & my father, my book—and that the
-------friendliness of it was kind of staggering to me, I am so used to
-------the opposite. That is probably too strong a way of putting it,
-------but it feels that way sometimes, open season on FW ever since he
-------held a gun to the head of whoever hands out the Pulitzer Prize &
-------forced them to award it to him. It's remarkable how fast I went
-------from being someone who had fairly actively written and published
-------for thirty years without much official critical attention, then
-------overnight got more of it—and unfortunately at a very unstable
-------time in my life, there have been a few of those—than I would
-------ever have wanted. I suppose I make myself clear enough., I am
-------grateful to you. Franz"

Theology

There must be someone else
who wakes in fear alone;
too bad we can’t talk
on our tiny phone.
Someone hidden from the day
like me, preparing to endure the
resurrection of the body, ouch;
or the gentler life to come,
oblivion. Who
mutters in synch with me, Christ
has come in the midst of the world
not to abolish suffering—
clearly!—
but to take part in it.
What does this mean?

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Franz Wright: first post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Mary Karr

Mary Karr disrupted the poetry scene, with her 1991 essay “Against Decoration”, by insisting that content is more important than poetic style. She is known for her essays and memoirs — particularly the best-selling The Liar’s Club — but still sees herself primarily as a poet. After years as an agnostic alcoholic, she came to embrace Catholic Christianity; although she admits to having a cafeteria approach, she seeks to follow the spiritual exercises of Ignatius.

Her 2010 address at the Festival of Faith & Writing (Grand Rapids, Michigan) was entitled, “Spiritual Revelations from a Black-Belt Sinner”; there she encouraged her audience in the discipline of prayer, and seeking God’s presence through gratitude. Two years earlier, at the same conference, she shared a stage with her friend Franz Wright. The two poets have followed a similar path, turning from alcoholism and depression, to faith in Christ. They each read a favourite poem from each other’s work.

The following poem is from her 2006 collection Sinners Welcome.

For a Dying Tomcat Who's Relinquished
His Former Hissing and Predatory Nature

I remember the long orange carp you once scooped
from the neighbor’s pond, bounding beyond
her swung broom, across summer lawns

to lay the fish on my stoop. Thanks
for that. I’m not one to whom offerings
often get made. You let me feel

how Christ might when I kneel,
weeping in the dark
over the usual maladies: love and its lack.

Only in tears do I speak
directly to him and with such
conviction. And only once you grew frail

did you finally slacken into me,
dozing against my ribs like a child.
You gave up the predatory flinch

that snapped the necks of so many
birds and slow-moving rodents.
Now your once powerful jaw

is malformed by black malignancies.
It hurts to eat. So you surrender in the way
I pray for: Lord, before my own death,

let me learn from this animal’s deep release
into my arms. Let me cease to fear
the embrace that seeks to still me.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Mary Karr: second post

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Franz Wright

Franz Wright was fortunate enough to have been born the son of poet James Wright — which opened doors for him into the literary world. When Franz won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his collection Walking To Martha’s Vineyard — proving his own worth — it was the first time a father and son had ever both received that honour.

Franz Wright was unfortunate enough to have been born the son of poet James Wright. His father’s absence in his life has left a void that keeps making its presence known in Franz’s poetry. Besides poetry, father and son have shared their alcoholism, dysfunctional behaviour and mental health issues. The search for father may be significant in his eventual search for Father and his conversion to Christianity.

In my review of Walking To Martha’s Vineyard in Rock & Sling, I described his book as,
--------“a moving collection of fragments that seem as though
--------they have been recovered from the early 21st century, a
--------series of peripheral glimpses into the centre of a reclaimed
--------soul, an abstract testimony to the healing power of Christ
--------in a landscape dominated by moonlight and snow — and
--------within dark, lonely churches that hold significance in their
--------silent spaces.”

Since winning the Pulitzer Prize, Franz Wright has had two subsequent collections published: God’s Silence (2006) and Wheeling Motel (2009).

Cloudless Snowfall

Great big flakes like white ashes
at nightfall descending
abruptly everywhere
and vanishing
in this hand like the host
on somebody's put-out tongue, she
turns the crucifix over
to me, still warm
from her touch two years later
and thank you,
I say all alone—
Vast whisp-whisp of wingbeats
awakens me and I look up
at a minute-long string of black geese
following low past the moon the white
course of the snow-covered river and
by the way thank You for
keeping Your face hidden, I
can hardly bear the beauty of this world.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Franz Wright: second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca