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C. D. Wright

1949–2016
https://cdwrightpoet.com
Black and white headshot of poet C.D. Wright with her dog.
Blue Flower Arts

C.D. Wright was born in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, the daughter of a judge and a court reporter. She published over a dozen books, including ShallCross (2016); The Poet, The Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, A Wedding in St. Roch, The Big Box Store, The Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All (2016); One With Others (2011), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was nominated for a National Book Award; Rising, Falling, Hovering (2008); Like Something Flying Backwards: New and Selected Poems (2007); and Tremble (1996). She also provided the text to two book collaborations with photographer Deborah Luster: One Big Self: An Investigation (2003), which documents Louisiana inmates; and The Lost Road Project (1994), a walk-in exhibit of Arkansas. She also published several book-length poems, including the critically acclaimed Deepstep Come Shining(1998).

Wright’s writing has been described as experimental, Southern, socially conscious, and elliptical; as a volume of selected poems, Steal Away demonstrates how Wright has not cleaved to any one voice or form but continues to evolve her style. As poet and critic Joel Brouwer asserts, “Wright belongs to a school of exactly one,” and Wright herself pointed out the contradictions inherent in her work: “I’m country but sophisticated. I’m particular and concrete, but I’m probing another plane. ... There are many times when I want to hammer the head. Other times I want to sleep on the hammer.”

Though her work is deeply connected to the Ozarks, Wright spent significant periods in New York and San Francisco before moving in 1983 to Rhode Island, where she taught at Brown University. With her husband, poet Forrest Gander, she founded and ran Lost Roads Press for over 20 years. Among her honors are a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, a Robert Creeley Award, and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, she was elected as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

“Poetry is a necessity of life,” Wright said. “It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.”

Poems by C. D. Wright
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Bibliography

POETRY

  • Alla Breve Loving (chapbook), Mill Mountain Press (Seattle, WA), 1976.
  • Room Rented by a Single Woman (chapbook), Lost Roads Publishing (Fayetteville, AR), 1977.
  • Terrorism (chapbook), Lost Roads Publishing (Fayetteville, AR), 1979.
  • Translations of the Gospel Back into Tongues, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1982.
  • Further Adventures with You, Carnegie-Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1986.
  • String Light, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1991.
  • Just Whistle: A Valentine, photographs by Deborah Luster, Kelsey Street Press (Berkeley, CA), 1993.
  • Tremble, Ecco Press (Hopewell, NJ), 1996.
  • Deepstep Come Shining, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 1998.
  • Steal Away: Selected and New Poems, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2001.
  • Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2005.

Work represented in anthologies, including The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, edited by Cary Nelson, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000; An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate Diversity of Their Art, edited by Annie Finch and Erin Belieu, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 2001; Poetry Performed, edited by Elise Paschen and Rebekah Mosby, Sourcebooks, 2001; and New Writings on Motherhood and Poetics, edited by Patricia Dienstfrey and Brenda Hillman, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2002.

OTHER

  • The Lost Roads Project: A Walk-in Book of Arkansas, University of Arkansas Press (Fayetteville, AR), 1994.
  • (Editor) Besmilr Brigham, Run through Rock: Selected Short Poems of Besmilr Brigham, Lost Roads Publishers (Barrington, RI), 2000.
  • One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, photographs by Deborah Luster, Twin Palms (Austin, TX), 2003.

Also contributor to periodicals, including American Letters and Commentary, Brick, Chain, Conjunctions, Fence, Document, Ironwood, American Poetry Review, New Yorker, and Sulfur. Contributing editor, Five Fingers Review, 1991-97, and Free Verse (Internet journal), 2001—; editor, Ploughshares, 2002-03.