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God's Silence
In this luminous new collection of poems, Franz Wright expands on the spiritual joy he found in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Walking to Martha’s Vineyard. Wright, whom we know as a poet of exquisite miniatures, opens God’s Silence with “East Boston, 1996,” a powerful long poem that looks back at the darker moments in the formation of his sensibility. He shares his private rules for bus riding (“No eye contact: the eyes of the terrified / terrify”), and recalls, among other experiences, his first encounter with a shotgun, as an eight-year-old boy (“In a clearing in the cornstalks . . . it was suggested / that I fire / on that muttering family of crows”). Throughout this volume, Wright continues his penetrating study of his own and our collective soul. He reaches a new level of acceptance as he intones the paradox “I have heard God’s silence like the sun,” and marvels at our presumptions:
We speak of Heaven who have not yet accomplished
even this, the holiness of things
precisely as they are, and never will!
Though Wright often seeks forgiveness in these poems, his black wit and self-deprecation are reliably present, and he delights in reminding us that “literature will lose, sunlight will win, don’t worry.”
But in this book, literature wins as well. God’s Silence is a deeply felt celebration of what poetry (and its silences) can do for us.
We speak of Heaven who have not yet accomplished
even this, the holiness of things
precisely as they are, and never will!
Though Wright often seeks forgiveness in these poems, his black wit and self-deprecation are reliably present, and he delights in reminding us that “literature will lose, sunlight will win, don’t worry.”
But in this book, literature wins as well. God’s Silence is a deeply felt celebration of what poetry (and its silences) can do for us.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
36 people are currently reading
1060 people want to read
About the author
Franz Wright
51 books119 followersBorn in Vienna, Franz Wright is the author of fourteen collections of poetry. Walking to Martha's Vineyard (Knopf 2003) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His newest collections, God’s Silence, and Earlier Poems were published by Knopf in, 2006 & 2007. Wright’s other books include The Beforelife (2001), Ill Lit: New and Selected Poems (1998), Rorschach Test (1995), The Night World and the Word Night (1993), and Midnight Postscript (1993). Mr. Wright has also translated poems by René Char, Erica Pedretti, and Rainer Maria Rilke. He has received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, as well as grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Wright has taught in many colleges and universities, including Emerson College and the University of Arkansas. He is currently the writer-in-residence at Brandeis. He has also worked in a mental health clinic in Lexington, Massachusetts, and as a volunteer at the Center for Grieving Children.
Franz Wright, son of the poet James Wright, began writing when he was very young. At 15, he sent one of his poems to his absentee father, who wrote back, “You’re a poet. Welcome to hell.” James and Franz Wright are the only father and son to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In a short essay on writing, Franz writes, “Think of it: a writer actually possesses the power to alter his past, to change what was once experienced as defeat into victory and what was once experienced as speechless anguish into a stroke of great good fortune or even something approaching blessedness, depending upon what he does with that past, what he makes out of it.” Charles Simic has characterized Wright 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.
Franz Wright, son of the poet James Wright, began writing when he was very young. At 15, he sent one of his poems to his absentee father, who wrote back, “You’re a poet. Welcome to hell.” James and Franz Wright are the only father and son to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In a short essay on writing, Franz writes, “Think of it: a writer actually possesses the power to alter his past, to change what was once experienced as defeat into victory and what was once experienced as speechless anguish into a stroke of great good fortune or even something approaching blessedness, depending upon what he does with that past, what he makes out of it.” Charles Simic has characterized Wright 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
September 2, 2008
"I lived as a monster, my only/hope is to die like a child."
His honesty is brutal.
His honesty is brutal.
April 5, 2020
NOTE. I was unaware when I wrote the following review that Franz Wright had died in 2015 at the age of 62. Had I known, I might have written the review somewhat differently. I choose now to let it stand as it is. I am, meanwhile, saddened that we have lost such a wonderful poet.
I have known Franz Wright’s poetry only through scattered pieces on the internet. (There are many.) He is quite open that he is a recovering addict and a devout Roman Catholic convert, both of which inform much of this volume. There is no doubt that the man is a first-rate poet. Some of his imagery is sublime, as in: Dawn Walks in Blue and Diamonds, which is a poem’s title, and, I have heard/God’s silence/like the sun, from which the book’s title derives, and which is so good that I have no quarrel when he (at least) twice repeats it verbatim in later poems.
A question of fairness nags at me: Does one judge a poet on an entire oeuvre or by the current book? If the former, must one include a contentious letter attributed to him that found its way online? The truth is, the oeuvre cannot be considered complete (nor do I have the familiarity required for it), and without seeing more of his correspondence, I must chalk that letter up to a bad day. And so I discuss only the book at hand. This may change once I have read more of his work — and I will.
I once heard a recovering addict say, “When I got sober, they didn't open the gates of heaven to let me in, but they did open the gates of hell to let me out." Wright appears to have trouble understanding the gates are open: all he has to do is walk through. He seems to have experienced the sudden white light variety of spiritual awakening while requiring empirical booster shots to maintain. It’s almost as though he has needed to write himself awake. I found myself rooting for him, the equivalent of yelling, “Get up, you sonofabitch! You can do it.” He gets there, or at least comes to terms with it toward the later stages of the collection, and I suspect the order of the poems is meant to reflect that.
Along the way, he misses few opportunities for self-castigation. In the cryptically entitled, Father Roger Goes For A Walk, he is in a rectory where he decides, And every day I’ll try / To do one thing I like, /In memory of being happy. I want to ask him, What the hell is wrong with now?
Impermanence is a recurring theme, as in Fading, where Wright sees a solitary candle / burning in honor of my first / deathday. Contrast that with: the angels, I think, may desperately envy us / … this knowledge of what it is like / to die: to see all things each day in light / of their certain vanishing.
Realistic, you may protest, and you would be right, but so is a smile or a flower or a kiss. Franz, you aren't young enough to be morbidly indulgent/indulgently morbid. Besides, you have God, recovery and a wife you love. Talent, too, an incredible talent.
In terms of recovery, he is given to what is known as “two-stepping.” i.e. getting the first step, acknowledging powerlessness over substance and then immediately becoming concerned for the welfare of others, as witnessed by his reference to an empty chair (presumably at a meeting) because: that’s someone / who is dying: / Find him. without doing the work of the intervening ten steps which leads to solid recovery. That his addiction continues to be real finds testament in, The Blackout: First Anniversary. He recalls being …penniless, / Seated at a bar, unable to remember / How I came there (why is obvious).The line, Blood of his blood, flesh of his ghost… tells us he is no longer that person, and yet he finishes: I am worn out. I can’t go on. We are uncertain whether this is the drunk or the sober Wright looking back. Or is he being deliberately obtuse?
There are times when he moves into prayer, the poetry of which may require his own level of faith as when he addresses the Virgin Mother: when you / are everywhere
In the movingly spiritual The Walk, the poet finds …frightening behavior/on the part of inanimate objects / […] / the faceless voice / saying, How can you expect energy from above / when you continue to receive it / from below / and are content? / I Am Not Content
That last statement, with deliberate wide spacing between words, comes as no surprise, yet is powerful as a concise summation of this collection.
The poem After concludes Those were the days all right / And they will come again / Oh, not for me— / But they will come. It is followed by tentative optimism. … In a happiness / which for reasons best known to Yourself I was blessed with / from childhood on… / [ … ] … that / can always come again / […] … this time / I will not whine. I will obey / and be / (forever) / still.
In Admission, one of the volume’s concluding (and perhaps conclusive) poems, Wright freshly observes, … physical objects themselves / appear to represent / something I can’t see / (not yet)— [ … ] ..this bright life / I yesterday only began to love, to understand.
Poems I have previously read of Franz Wright’s have been almost formal, with more standardized lines. In God's Silence, he is more of a risk taker, and while he has earned his place in the camps of T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas, he ventures here (effectively, I think) into the abstract realms of e.e. cummings and Charles Olson. There is an element of suspense in where his work will now take him. And us.
I have known Franz Wright’s poetry only through scattered pieces on the internet. (There are many.) He is quite open that he is a recovering addict and a devout Roman Catholic convert, both of which inform much of this volume. There is no doubt that the man is a first-rate poet. Some of his imagery is sublime, as in: Dawn Walks in Blue and Diamonds, which is a poem’s title, and, I have heard/God’s silence/like the sun, from which the book’s title derives, and which is so good that I have no quarrel when he (at least) twice repeats it verbatim in later poems.
A question of fairness nags at me: Does one judge a poet on an entire oeuvre or by the current book? If the former, must one include a contentious letter attributed to him that found its way online? The truth is, the oeuvre cannot be considered complete (nor do I have the familiarity required for it), and without seeing more of his correspondence, I must chalk that letter up to a bad day. And so I discuss only the book at hand. This may change once I have read more of his work — and I will.
I once heard a recovering addict say, “When I got sober, they didn't open the gates of heaven to let me in, but they did open the gates of hell to let me out." Wright appears to have trouble understanding the gates are open: all he has to do is walk through. He seems to have experienced the sudden white light variety of spiritual awakening while requiring empirical booster shots to maintain. It’s almost as though he has needed to write himself awake. I found myself rooting for him, the equivalent of yelling, “Get up, you sonofabitch! You can do it.” He gets there, or at least comes to terms with it toward the later stages of the collection, and I suspect the order of the poems is meant to reflect that.
Along the way, he misses few opportunities for self-castigation. In the cryptically entitled, Father Roger Goes For A Walk, he is in a rectory where he decides, And every day I’ll try / To do one thing I like, /In memory of being happy. I want to ask him, What the hell is wrong with now?
Impermanence is a recurring theme, as in Fading, where Wright sees a solitary candle / burning in honor of my first / deathday. Contrast that with: the angels, I think, may desperately envy us / … this knowledge of what it is like / to die: to see all things each day in light / of their certain vanishing.
Realistic, you may protest, and you would be right, but so is a smile or a flower or a kiss. Franz, you aren't young enough to be morbidly indulgent/indulgently morbid. Besides, you have God, recovery and a wife you love. Talent, too, an incredible talent.
In terms of recovery, he is given to what is known as “two-stepping.” i.e. getting the first step, acknowledging powerlessness over substance and then immediately becoming concerned for the welfare of others, as witnessed by his reference to an empty chair (presumably at a meeting) because: that’s someone / who is dying: / Find him. without doing the work of the intervening ten steps which leads to solid recovery. That his addiction continues to be real finds testament in, The Blackout: First Anniversary. He recalls being …penniless, / Seated at a bar, unable to remember / How I came there (why is obvious).The line, Blood of his blood, flesh of his ghost… tells us he is no longer that person, and yet he finishes: I am worn out. I can’t go on. We are uncertain whether this is the drunk or the sober Wright looking back. Or is he being deliberately obtuse?
There are times when he moves into prayer, the poetry of which may require his own level of faith as when he addresses the Virgin Mother: when you / are everywhere
In the movingly spiritual The Walk, the poet finds …frightening behavior/on the part of inanimate objects / […] / the faceless voice / saying, How can you expect energy from above / when you continue to receive it / from below / and are content? / I Am Not Content
That last statement, with deliberate wide spacing between words, comes as no surprise, yet is powerful as a concise summation of this collection.
The poem After concludes Those were the days all right / And they will come again / Oh, not for me— / But they will come. It is followed by tentative optimism. … In a happiness / which for reasons best known to Yourself I was blessed with / from childhood on… / [ … ] … that / can always come again / […] … this time / I will not whine. I will obey / and be / (forever) / still.
In Admission, one of the volume’s concluding (and perhaps conclusive) poems, Wright freshly observes, … physical objects themselves / appear to represent / something I can’t see / (not yet)— [ … ] ..this bright life / I yesterday only began to love, to understand.
Poems I have previously read of Franz Wright’s have been almost formal, with more standardized lines. In God's Silence, he is more of a risk taker, and while he has earned his place in the camps of T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas, he ventures here (effectively, I think) into the abstract realms of e.e. cummings and Charles Olson. There is an element of suspense in where his work will now take him. And us.
June 9, 2009
Franz Wright continues to thrill me with his form. Sparse, light between the lines, perfect pauses. He creates and I aspire. His lines are like a well-lit leaf in a dusky forest.
I couldn't give the collection 5 stars because I've read all his wonderful books and sometimes I just want him to have a new obsession. His constant discussion of his alcoholism and his issues with his dad wear on me a bit. I want him to whittle away at these themes the way he whittles away at his lines, so there is more breathing room.
I couldn't give the collection 5 stars because I've read all his wonderful books and sometimes I just want him to have a new obsession. His constant discussion of his alcoholism and his issues with his dad wear on me a bit. I want him to whittle away at these themes the way he whittles away at his lines, so there is more breathing room.
May 12, 2012
And occasionally I weep to think of how one could write such beautiful tortures.
June 9, 2014
Rarely does poetry move me to tears. But when I first heard Wright read his poetry on the radio, driving in December twilight through some mid-western state (was it Arizona?), I was struck. I forgot about him, though, for nearly a year until I stumbled upon this book at Elliot Bay earlier this summer. Once again, Wright's words moved to me tears, as his words frequently speak to both the consolation and the loneliness found in divine silence. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts.
And I have heard God's silence like the sun
and sought to change
Now
I am just going to listen to the silence
till the Silence.
********************************
The long silences need to be loved, perhaps
more than the words
which arrive
to describe them
in time.
And I have heard God's silence like the sun
and sought to change
Now
I am just going to listen to the silence
till the Silence.
********************************
The long silences need to be loved, perhaps
more than the words
which arrive
to describe them
in time.
July 27, 2011
Funny, heart-breaking and God-haunted...not as direct and nakedly forthright as his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Walking to Martha's Vineyard, but still a powerful, almost prayer-like, record of a man questing for meaning and redemption while grappling with thoughts of his own mortality.
May 3, 2014
An Admission:
With poetry collections, I always have trouble writing the review. For, I am not sure whether I will do justice to the poems or justice to the emotions that I felt while reading some of the poems.
One of my favourite poems from the collection:
BEGINNING AGAIN
“If I could stop talking, completely
cease talking for a year, I might begin
to get well,” he muttered.
Off alone again performing
brain surgery on himself
in a small badly lit
room with no mirror. A room
whose floor, ceiling and walls
are all mirrors, what a mess
oh my God -
And still
it stands,
the question
not how begin
again, but rather
Why?
So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.
With poetry collections, I always have trouble writing the review. For, I am not sure whether I will do justice to the poems or justice to the emotions that I felt while reading some of the poems.
One of my favourite poems from the collection:
BEGINNING AGAIN
“If I could stop talking, completely
cease talking for a year, I might begin
to get well,” he muttered.
Off alone again performing
brain surgery on himself
in a small badly lit
room with no mirror. A room
whose floor, ceiling and walls
are all mirrors, what a mess
oh my God -
And still
it stands,
the question
not how begin
again, but rather
Why?
So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.
February 2, 2022
this poetry collection has fallen into my life so unexpectedly and accidentally that i feel almost intimidated by how much i loved it. can't recall when was the last time i experienced "the right book at the right time" so vividly. here's one of the poems that will stay in my heart for quite some time
"THE READER
The mask was gone now, burned away
(from inside)
by God's gaze
There was no
I, there
was no he—
finally
there was no text, only
what the words stood for;
and then
what all things stand for."
"THE READER
The mask was gone now, burned away
(from inside)
by God's gaze
There was no
I, there
was no he—
finally
there was no text, only
what the words stood for;
and then
what all things stand for."
May 6, 2024
i think we realize that there is actually a large amount time on earth to do things like mutilate our bodies and shoot up and watch philip seymour hoffman movies and that the air escaping our throats is never not charged with a high voltage intensity like the thunderclap of a toothache setting in, , it's like birds flying low before a storm , something primal. we don't want stale, good enough, preservatives, . nothing is enough. no i don't want potato chips. i need to give my hands something to do before my skin ruptures and splits open. our problem is too much time and an inability to satisfy. franz wright said i will make you a sandwich but it will take the rest of my life. always in search of salvation, salivation—come in my mouth an easy death whispers. let me have a taste. i'm a gustatory learner. we fuck hard until the fire alarm goes off and make coq a vin on wednesdays. who want me
March 9, 2014
The thing to do here is not to write a review of this beautiful book. The thing to do here is to just copy down my favorite poem from it, since it seems to be unavailable on the internet:
Introduction
How do you do. I am the broken
bird hidden in a grass-filled shoebox
and gradually nursed to death by some neglected child
I'm the crazy woman whose pet rat rides her left shoulder
drinking her tears.
Wait a minute--
allow me to regress.
(See
there once was a weird little girl
whose weirdness was not all her fault;
for her shrink research father
kept locked in their vault-
like basement not one rat but scores of them, cage
stacked on cage of them, tiny
red green and yellow electrodes affixed
to their skulls.
I mean really.
I think I myself would turn into a strange
little mouse, forget
girl, if
brought up in that house:
she secretly possessed, you see,
to that truly fucked-up Dad's underworld,
her own bright silver key…)--
OK.
And I am her muteness,
the blue of her eyes
like the color of light filling up
vacant airliners' cabins at dawn,
and her night dreams, far happier and more real
than any psychiatrist's BMW life! Which
is as it should be: it is
the only rest and dark
the only
infinitely lonely
and cruel gift that psychosis has to offer.
I am her to learn
to bear
the beams of love,
what else
Bells
through the leaves, I am here to endure the
bells tolling
underground
like you a guest, a ghost here
Everything will be forgotten
And either I am too alone
or I am not
alone enough
to make each moment
holy
(No one bats 1000, friend
no one
bats 500)
And I have heard God's silence like the sun
and sought to change
Now
I'm just going to listen to the silence
till the Silence.
Introduction
How do you do. I am the broken
bird hidden in a grass-filled shoebox
and gradually nursed to death by some neglected child
I'm the crazy woman whose pet rat rides her left shoulder
drinking her tears.
Wait a minute--
allow me to regress.
(See
there once was a weird little girl
whose weirdness was not all her fault;
for her shrink research father
kept locked in their vault-
like basement not one rat but scores of them, cage
stacked on cage of them, tiny
red green and yellow electrodes affixed
to their skulls.
I mean really.
I think I myself would turn into a strange
little mouse, forget
girl, if
brought up in that house:
she secretly possessed, you see,
to that truly fucked-up Dad's underworld,
her own bright silver key…)--
OK.
And I am her muteness,
the blue of her eyes
like the color of light filling up
vacant airliners' cabins at dawn,
and her night dreams, far happier and more real
than any psychiatrist's BMW life! Which
is as it should be: it is
the only rest and dark
the only
infinitely lonely
and cruel gift that psychosis has to offer.
I am her to learn
to bear
the beams of love,
what else
Bells
through the leaves, I am here to endure the
bells tolling
underground
like you a guest, a ghost here
Everything will be forgotten
And either I am too alone
or I am not
alone enough
to make each moment
holy
(No one bats 1000, friend
no one
bats 500)
And I have heard God's silence like the sun
and sought to change
Now
I'm just going to listen to the silence
till the Silence.
May 19, 2008
Really good poetry, though over long. I saw Franz Wright at the Festival of Faith and Writing and was blown away by his thoughts and reading. He is a poet supremely concerned with the big questions in life and not in the market for easy answers. But, at the same time, he is not afraid of being disarmingly confessional in his poems. Though it is heresy to confuse the speaker of the poem with the author, I'm pretty sure many of these poems are purely autobiographical, and powerful because of that.
May 17, 2021
"Nobody has called for some time. / (I was always the death of the party.) / In a way that leaves / a scar, I / no longer wish to love. / [...] I'm still alone with all the world's / beauty and cruelty. / And I recall / everything, / everything's / here— / what is time? When / is the present? / I'm still here alone in the night hours with everyone. / And everything that once was / infinitely far / and unsayable is now / unsayable / and right here in the room" (Progress, 16).
4.5 stars. Wow. I was teary before even reaching page 3. This is a masterful journey through aloneness, alternating currents of joy and despair, and paradox. God's silence is like the sun.
"The long silences need to be loved, perhaps / more than the words / which arrive / to describe them / in time" (Home Remedy, 8).
4.5 stars. Wow. I was teary before even reaching page 3. This is a masterful journey through aloneness, alternating currents of joy and despair, and paradox. God's silence is like the sun.
"The long silences need to be loved, perhaps / more than the words / which arrive / to describe them / in time" (Home Remedy, 8).
March 1, 2024
"literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry."
July 10, 2009
Normally, I cringe a little at poetry collections more than 50 pages in length (barring anthologies and collected and selected, of course), for usually longer collections end up feeling way too loose, kind of like watching a needlessly included deleted scene - I end up sitting there, saying, "Yup, that should have been cut." Maybe there's business pressure sometimes to put out a longer collection (since I myself have picked up a 40-page book and seen the price and have said to myself, "?!?"), but when something like James Tate's Memoir of the Hawk lands in my lap and I start to go through it, I find either that a good third of the poems could go, or (even worse), the longer expanse of work lets me see that poet's shtick - a typical strategy for getting into a poem that, over an expanse of a collection, becomes wearisome rather than insightful.
But Franz Wright, at the top of his game, inspires me to fold over the corner of the page as a poem to save for later, to nose through when I'm looking for a firecracker of a read, and in God's Silence, I had a full collection of that. Yes, these 140 pages of poems could have made for 50 or so pages of collection that could have warranted Franz another medal, but when it comes to the category of novel-length collections of poems, this one is among the best I've read. Hard to say anything new here about what I like about these poems - Wright is awfully emotive, from despair to joy to just plain fucking laughs, and it is always a pleasure to find poetry that has that kind of direct, emotive appeal.
One thing I may put forth as a good rationale for a longer collection here is that I found myself a little more prepared to change gears between poems. Wright demands that you soak in his mood for a particular poem (even if retroactively), and with more poems to get through for this, I was a little more inclined to WANT changes of mood. I've already put in my order for his September collection, cuz I just want his train to keep going.
But Franz Wright, at the top of his game, inspires me to fold over the corner of the page as a poem to save for later, to nose through when I'm looking for a firecracker of a read, and in God's Silence, I had a full collection of that. Yes, these 140 pages of poems could have made for 50 or so pages of collection that could have warranted Franz another medal, but when it comes to the category of novel-length collections of poems, this one is among the best I've read. Hard to say anything new here about what I like about these poems - Wright is awfully emotive, from despair to joy to just plain fucking laughs, and it is always a pleasure to find poetry that has that kind of direct, emotive appeal.
One thing I may put forth as a good rationale for a longer collection here is that I found myself a little more prepared to change gears between poems. Wright demands that you soak in his mood for a particular poem (even if retroactively), and with more poems to get through for this, I was a little more inclined to WANT changes of mood. I've already put in my order for his September collection, cuz I just want his train to keep going.
October 31, 2022
NIGHT WALK
The all-night convenience store’s empty
and no one is behind the counter.
You open and shut the glass door a few times
causing a bell to go off,
but no one appears. You only came
to buy a pack of cigarettes, maybe
a copy of yesterday’s newspaper—
finally you take one and leave
thirty-five cents in its place.
It is freezing, but it is a good thing
to step outside again:
you can feel less alone in the night,
with lights on here and there
between the dark buildings and trees.
Your own among them, somewhere.
There must be thousands of people
in this city who are dying
to welcome you into their small bolted rooms,
to sit you down and tell you
what has happened to their lives.
And the night smells like snow.
Walking home for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable.
The all-night convenience store’s empty
and no one is behind the counter.
You open and shut the glass door a few times
causing a bell to go off,
but no one appears. You only came
to buy a pack of cigarettes, maybe
a copy of yesterday’s newspaper—
finally you take one and leave
thirty-five cents in its place.
It is freezing, but it is a good thing
to step outside again:
you can feel less alone in the night,
with lights on here and there
between the dark buildings and trees.
Your own among them, somewhere.
There must be thousands of people
in this city who are dying
to welcome you into their small bolted rooms,
to sit you down and tell you
what has happened to their lives.
And the night smells like snow.
Walking home for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable.
June 18, 2008
Each time I read one of his books I end up liking--loving--it more than I thought I would on the first page. Wright doesn't use any tricks--he just says things so beautifully.
May 7, 2025
And the night smells like snow.
Walking home, for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It's unendurable, unendurable.
[...]
No one must be asked to relinquish
a grievance that can't be removed
without further destruction, it may be
it is lodged in who he is now
like a bullet in a brain
whose removal might just cause worse change.
- from East Boston
...dreamily
smiling
with an ice pick
in my skull, it
was all
in my mind.
- from Poem in Two Parts
I just noticed that it is my own private
National I Hate Myself and Want to Die Day
(which means the next day I will love my life
and want to live forever).
[...]
literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry.
- from Publication Date
And every day I'll try
to do one thing I like,
in memory of being happy.
- from Father Roger Goes for a Walk
I lived as a monster, my only
hope is to die like a child.
In the otherwise vacant
and seemingly ceilingless
vastness of a snowlit Boston
church, a voice
said: I
can do that--
if you ask me, I will do it
for you.
- from The Heaven
The what lies beyond
this loneliness and panic
I call dying, time, remorse, this cold
and purifying
fire, which hurts so much, which burns
away the world and all I was
who walked and breathed and spoke
how real it all seemed
for a few years, but I was always
immortal and will be
once more, when I return
to the infinite time
which elapsed before I was conceived;
[...]
And I have heard God's silence like the sun
now I long to return to it
[...]
The angel's going to raise his arms and sing that time is no more
nor tears: that numbered
sea of them is gone--
now there is a new sea, a new earth, a new sky--
and I will know what to say at the end: What end?
And I can add I found this world sufficiently miraculous for me, before I'm changed.
- from Arkansas Good Friday
The final and ultimate act of compassion: return
from peace to the place where you were tortured
to death in order to comfort once more
the frightened friends who'd deserted you, denying
even having known you.
- from Text & Commentary
Eyes filled with the great gold wheel of God's eternal day.
- from Living Twice
How do you do. I am the broken
bird hidden in a grass-filled shoebox
and gradually nursed to death by some neglected child
I'm the crazy woman whose pet rat rides her left shoulder
drinking her tears.
- from Introduction
Empty me of the bitterness and disappointment of being nothing but myself
Immerse me in the mystery of reality
Fill me with love for the truly afflicted
that hopeless love, if need be
make me one of them again--
- from Why Is the Winter Light
And I did, I put the bullet in
my head,
I thought
(A single lead
antidepressant and all
would be cured)
[...]
The uninterruptible
voice, the
silence I now call
my only
friend
Who says
right about now you might want to stop playing
mad chemist with your brain: return to Me
and I will return
- from The Next Home
After you were dead, I thought
nothing really terrible can ever happen now.
[...]
never again can I stab you in the heart.
- from Wrong
I feel like I'm standing in somebody's dorm room
my book on the desk, open
to this page: November
light, bare
infectious shadows
moving on the pillow
some sort of distant whale song
through the glass
silently bending the pines
It's 1974--
remember, before
cocaine became addictive--
- from Month Six
I would like to give my life
the sad and awful simplicity
of an early weekday mass with
a handful of most lonely humans in attendance.
- from A Successful Day (Fill in the Blank)
And so much ecstasy, how could I tell you
Those were the days all right
And they will surely come again
Oh, not for me--
but they will come.
- from After
July 5, 2019
Franz Wright certainly knows how to brood!
Wright fills his book of poems with some of the darker aspects of life - death, addiction, insomnia, and (of course) God’s silence. Despite his focus on affliction and misery, Wright is able to relatably capture the beauty to be found in both the highs and lows of the common life. While his focus is often on anguish, he’s not relegated to be despondent -- I found Wright to shine brightest when his hope took center stage. And by offering his hope right alongside his despair, it makes his hope seem all the more meaningful.
I haven’t read poetry in a long time, and I found several of his poems to be a little cryptic, particularly in the beginning of the book. Despite this, many of his poems felt both straightforward and unassuming, while also communicating a depth of thought. Wright was Catholic, and the hope that shines through is pretty directly related to his Christian faith. Many of his poems read as some of the most beautiful prayers I have ever read.
Top Ten Favorite Poems:
Honorable Mention:
Here’s “Love”, the poem that prompted me to get this collection of poems.
Wright fills his book of poems with some of the darker aspects of life - death, addiction, insomnia, and (of course) God’s silence. Despite his focus on affliction and misery, Wright is able to relatably capture the beauty to be found in both the highs and lows of the common life. While his focus is often on anguish, he’s not relegated to be despondent -- I found Wright to shine brightest when his hope took center stage. And by offering his hope right alongside his despair, it makes his hope seem all the more meaningful.
I haven’t read poetry in a long time, and I found several of his poems to be a little cryptic, particularly in the beginning of the book. Despite this, many of his poems felt both straightforward and unassuming, while also communicating a depth of thought. Wright was Catholic, and the hope that shines through is pretty directly related to his Christian faith. Many of his poems read as some of the most beautiful prayers I have ever read.
Top Ten Favorite Poems:
Publication Date
From a Line by Reverdy
The Hawk
The Reader
Arkansas First Light
Text & Commentary
A Happy Thought
Why Is The Winter Light
Love
Wake
Honorable Mention:
On the Death of a Cat
Here’s “Love”, the poem that prompted me to get this collection of poems.
While they were considering whether to stone her -
and why not? - he knelt
and with his finger wrote
something in the dust. We are
as you know made from
dust, and the unknown
word
was, therefore, and is
and forever will be
written in our flesh
in gray folds of
memory’s
flesh. En
archê ên ho logos:
September 27, 2019
I have been reading this collection in bits and pieces over the last six months because it is so spectacular, I have to take it in small doses. Franz Wright’s background fascinates me, and the way in which he writes about God and things of a spiritual nature is unlike any other writer I’ve read. Many of his poems are so subtle I’ve only discovered their biblical allusion or subject after rereading. His work allows for probing thought and for long reflection, which are qualities I always love in poetry. I’m looking forward to reading more of his work, particularly his Pulitzer-winning volume.
January 12, 2020
I am not an avid poetry reader, nor am I usually a review-leaver, but this book was too good not to say anything. Franz Wright moved me to tears, more than once. His fearlessness to write about human struggles that we all go through, in addition to thoughtful concepts such as Heaven, Hell, and fate was remarkable. I found myself dog-earring every other page!
“So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.“
“The long silences need to be loved, perhaps more than the words which arrive to describe them in time.”
“Time, inexhaustible wound, for
your unwitnessed and destitute coronation.”
“So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.“
“The long silences need to be loved, perhaps more than the words which arrive to describe them in time.”
“Time, inexhaustible wound, for
your unwitnessed and destitute coronation.”
August 16, 2024
“Walking home, for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable.”
I picked up this book randomly at the foreign language section of my local bookstore while I waited for a friend and it’s such a good collection of poems, I’m really glad I stumbled upon it.
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable.”
I picked up this book randomly at the foreign language section of my local bookstore while I waited for a friend and it’s such a good collection of poems, I’m really glad I stumbled upon it.
June 7, 2024
this spoke directly to me for some reason, i felt it in my bones. love when the poetry does this
“walking home, for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
and an intense love rushes to your heart, and hope. it's unendurable, unendurable.”
“walking home, for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
and an intense love rushes to your heart, and hope. it's unendurable, unendurable.”
December 2, 2025
“And the night smells like snow.
Walking home, for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It's unendurable, unendurable.”
Walking home, for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It's unendurable, unendurable.”
September 3, 2022
dói o peito.
November 5, 2025
maybe my favourite complete collection from him that I've read so far.
Just beautiful.
Just beautiful.
March 11, 2014
The second Franz Wright book I've read. Again, this is a good poet, but he's stuck with an interminable subject. God is such an empty or personally un-relatable thing that the poems can only ever be ephemeral themselves. In that sense, Wright succeeds and fails.
God is a lot like love: unless you happen to be in its grip at the time, any mention of it is going to come off as delusion. It's a sickness we're almost constitutionally incapable of shunning. Like love, god presents itself briefly and disappears before you can effectively capture it. Like love, it renders everything, the poem included, at first unnecessary and then, when it's gone, impotent. And the horseshit part of it is that it's not even real. We're all just wandering around love/god-sick, and all of the momentarily sober people are too polite or sensitive to tell us it's all in our heads. "Don't upset the delusional maniac." This isn't helping us. But so then what do you say instead of "god"? Should we be done with "silly little love songs"? I don't know. Poor Franz. First an addict, now this.
God is a lot like love: unless you happen to be in its grip at the time, any mention of it is going to come off as delusion. It's a sickness we're almost constitutionally incapable of shunning. Like love, god presents itself briefly and disappears before you can effectively capture it. Like love, it renders everything, the poem included, at first unnecessary and then, when it's gone, impotent. And the horseshit part of it is that it's not even real. We're all just wandering around love/god-sick, and all of the momentarily sober people are too polite or sensitive to tell us it's all in our heads. "Don't upset the delusional maniac." This isn't helping us. But so then what do you say instead of "god"? Should we be done with "silly little love songs"? I don't know. Poor Franz. First an addict, now this.
March 16, 2010
I feel odd writing anything about this collection right now.
I have been away from the more literary world of words for a long time. Today, after a really rough stretch of work< I needed a little something for the soul.
So today, there was a spring air, a cold beer, and a touch of poetry. I had half-finished this collection some time ago and came back to it today, devouring what I had left.
I want to say something illuminating about this collection, but I don't feel like I have it in me right now. I enjoyed the poems. They made me think. There were words that I needed to read.
Someday, perhaps I can say more and not sound horridly pedantic.
I have been away from the more literary world of words for a long time. Today, after a really rough stretch of work< I needed a little something for the soul.
So today, there was a spring air, a cold beer, and a touch of poetry. I had half-finished this collection some time ago and came back to it today, devouring what I had left.
I want to say something illuminating about this collection, but I don't feel like I have it in me right now. I enjoyed the poems. They made me think. There were words that I needed to read.
Someday, perhaps I can say more and not sound horridly pedantic.
September 10, 2008
My usual comment on poetry: I just don't get it. And, again with this collection, I just didn't get it. I don't know what these poems are about, what they're trying to say. They didn't say anything to me certainly. Maybe they concern things I don't care about; maybe they're too wrapped up in the author's private vision; or maybe I'm just too dense. Whatever the reason, I didn't get anything out of reading these. Done with the collection and done with poetry for the year.
Read
March 13, 2021A phenomenal book of poems. The description calls it 'luminous' and that is just about the right word for this collection. Rarely in poetry do I find unwavering faith alongside doubt, tragedy, and depression (for good reason) but Wright's trust in God and longing for the life beyond this one make up the heart of these poems. Very moving and exquisitely well-written (seriously, cannot overstate how amazing his writing is). Will be on the lookout for more of his work.
October 23, 2009
With each additional volume, I'm really getting into Franz's work. His religion and family interplay with sense of the human condition, it seems he may have been pretty poor, almost street poor at one time; or he's somewhat fascinated by the impoverished. Death is another obsession. God's silence occurs in several pieces as do other key words and phrases and I like these cross references.
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