Further Adventures with You

by C.D. Wright

A collection of poetry by C. D. Wright.

Genres: Poetry

53 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1986

About the author

C. D. Wright was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas. She earned a BA in French from Memphis State College (now the University of Memphis) in 1971 and briefly attended law school before leaving to pursue an MFA from the University of Arkansas, which she received in 1976. Her poetry thesis was titled Alla Breve Loving.

In 1977 the publishing company founded by Frank Stanford, Lost Roads Publishers, published Wright's first collection, Room Rented by A Single Woman. After Stanford died in 1978, Wright took over Lost Roads, continuing the mission of publishing new poets and starting the practice of publishing translations. In 1979, she moved to San Francisco, where she met poet Forrest Gander. Wright and Gander married in 1983 and had a son, Brecht, and co-edited Lost Roads until 2005.

In 1981, Wright lived in Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico and completed her third book of poems, Translation of the Gospel Back into Tongues. In 1983 she moved to Providence, Rhode Island to teach writing at Brown University as the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English. In 2013,

C.D. Wright died on January 12, 2016 at the age of 67 in Barrington, Rhode Island.

Reviews

[Chase!]

“Lo, this is the breastbone's embraceable light. / We are here. Still beating and constellated.” Though this book is a bit different from some of her later writing, I appreciated the opportunity to re-encounter a poet at an earlier stage in her career and practice. Even still, some of those elements that I appreciate most about her work (the surrealism of daily life in the South, the deft and innovative use of language, the ear) are still readily, and wonderfully, apparent.

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘I have heard of one man of atonement:
in a tent on a frozen lake
under the aurora australis, he sleeps
in his down, dreaming of no one,
his airplane. There is the oil
he guards with his body. The lamp
at his back like another body,
someone with a sun inside of her.
A gloved finger rubs a blue eyelid.
There is horror first of the life
that goes on below ice. By degrees
the limbs harden with light. Thinking
of a word no longer spoken by men:
Vouchsafe.’

(p35, 'Illuminations')

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I also love C.D. Wright, but prefer her later books.