Carolyn D. Wright (January 6, 1949 – January 12, 2016) was an American
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
. She was a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island.
Background
C. D. Wright was born in
Mountain Home, Arkansas
Mountain Home is a city in, and the county seat of, Baxter County, Arkansas, United States, in the southern Ozark Mountains near the northern state border with Missouri. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 12,448. A total of 41, ...
, to a chancery judge and a court reporter.
She earned a BA in French from Memphis State University (now the
University of Memphis
}
The University of Memphis (UofM) is a public university, public research university in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students.
The university maintains the Herff College of Engineering ...
) in 1971 and briefly attended law school before leaving to pursue an MFA from the
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas ...
, which she received in 1976. Her poetry thesis was titled ''Alla Breve Loving''.
In 1977, the publishing company founded by
Frank Stanford
Frank Stanford (born Francis Gildart Smith; August 1, 1948 – June 3, 1978) was an American poet. He is most known for his epic, ''The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You'' – a labyrinthine poem without stanzas or punctuation. In a ...
,
Lost Roads Publishers Lost Roads is a small press founded in 1976 in Arkansas by poet Frank Stanford.[Lost Roads](_blank)
. Its stated mi ...
, published Wright's first collection, ''Room Rented by A Single Woman''. After Stanford died in 1978, Wright took over Lost Roads, continuing its 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
Forrest Gander (born 1956) is an American poet, translator, essayist, and novelist. The A.K. Seaver Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts & Comparative Literature at Brown University, Gander won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2019 for ''Be With' ...
. Wright and Gander married in 1983 and had a son, Brecht. The husband and wife were co-editors at Lost Roads until 2005.
In 1981, Wright and Gander moved to
Dolores Hidalgo
Dolores Hidalgo (; in full, Dolores Hidalgo Cuna de la Independencia Nacional, en, Dolores Hidalgo Birthplace of exicanNational Independence) is the name of a city and the surrounding municipality in the north-central part of the Mexican state o ...
, Mexico, where she completed her third book of poems, ''Translation of the Gospel Back into Tongues''. In 1983, they moved to
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
, where she began teaching at
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
as the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English. Over the next 30 years, Wright won many major American literary prizes (including fellowships from the Lila Wallace, Guggenheim, Lannan, and MacArthur Foundations) while publishing one of the most eclectic bodies of poetic work of her generation. The cyclical erotic and tormented fragments of ''Just Whistle'' are as distinct from the compressed, sensual narratives of ''Translation of the Gospel Back into Tongues'' as from the lyrical southern paeans of ''Further Adventures with You''. Perhaps her most original and internationally influential publications are the book-length works ''Deepstep Come Shining'', ''One Big Self'', and ''One With Others''. Each developed, in new directions, Wright's formally innovative and fundamentally ethical meditations on the South, on race relations, on incarceration, and on the lives of the unsung. Together, those books helped to define and extend the possibilities for documentary poetics in the 21st century. In 2013, Wright was elected a chancellor of the
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreac ...
.
Stephanie Burt has described Wright as an
Elliptical Poet, but Burt did not use that description in an essay she published as a tribute to Wright just after Wright's death. As
Joel Brouwer
Joel Brouwer (born 1968) is an American poet, professor and critic. His most recent poetry collection is ''Off Message'' released in 2016
He is also the author of ''Exactly What Happened,'' which received the Larry Levis Prize from Virginia Comm ...
has said, she "belongs to a school of exactly one."
C.D. Wright died on January 12, 2016, six days after her 67th birthday. Her brother, Warren Wright, reported that she "died peacefully in her sleep of
thrombosis
Thrombosis (from Ancient Greek "clotting") is the formation of a blood clot inside a blood vessel, obstructing the flow of blood through the circulatory system. When a blood vessel (a vein or an artery) is injured, the body uses platelets (thro ...
, a clot, after an overly long flight from
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
." At the time of her death, she was living in
Barrington, Rhode Island
Barrington is a suburban, residential town in Bristol County, Rhode Island located approximately southeast of Providence. It was founded by Congregationalist separatists from Swansea, Massachusetts and incorporated in 1717.
Barrington was ceded ...
.
Poetry
Wright's
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
is rooted in a sense of place and time and often employs distinct voices in dialogue, particularly those of the American South. Her work is formally inventive and often documentary in spirit, in the sense that it honors those whose stories or voices might be lost, were it not for her own writing. Her diction mixes high and low to surprising effect, and her range of reference is both broad and deep, including phrases from other languages, allusions to other poems, and pieces of conversation. Her books include precisely distilled lyrics such as those collected in ''Tremble'' as well as book-length poems beginning with ''Just Whistle'', her first collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster.
In a 2001 interview with Kent Johnson, Wright said,
As to my own aesthetic associations—affiliations, sympathies—I have never belonged to a notable element of writers who identified with one another partly because I come from Arkansas, specifically that part of Arkansas known for its resistance-to-joining, a non-urban environment where readily identifiable groups and sub-groups are less likely to form.
In the same interview, she states,
The theoretically-driven San Francisco poets who were in cahoots with poets in New York and conversant with European vanguard movements—they provided me with a need to become critically aware of my back-home ways; sharpened me to a degree. I'm grateful for the exposure, the education. I am indebted to particular poets' work from that point in time, but I am not an intellectual in the sense that qualifies or requires me to belong to a manifestoed-group. And of course one comes to take some pride in one's own outsider status.
Wright published literary maps of both Rhode Island and
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...
. Wright's later work includes ''String Light''; ''Deepstep Come Shining'', a book-length poem; and ''One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana'', another collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster. ''One Big Self: An Investigation'' contains just the poems. Her poems are featured in ''American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets'' (2006) and many other anthologies. ''One With Others'' mixes investigative journalism, history and poetry to explore homegrown civil rights incidents and the critical role her mentor, a brilliant and difficult woman, played in a little-known 1969 March Against Fear in her native Arkansas. Shortly after Wright's death in January 2016,
Copper Canyon Press
Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, founded in 1972 specializing exclusively in the publication of poetry. It is located in Port Townsend, Washington.
Copper Canyon Press publishes new collections of poetry by both popu ...
published ''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'', a book of prosimetric essays, and ''ShallCross'', a book of both short- and long-form poems.
Awards
![NBCC Awards After Party 2012 Shankbone 26](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/NBCC_Awards_After_Party_2012_Shankbone_26.JPG)
* 1987
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
* 1989
Whiting Award
* 1994-99
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ...
of the state of
Rhode Island
Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...
* 1999
Foundation for Contemporary Arts
The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City that offers financial support and recognition to contemporary performing and visual artists through awards for artistic innovation and potential. It was ...
, grant
* 2004
MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to ...
* 2005
Robert Creeley
Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...
Award
* 2009 ''Rising, Falling, Hovering'' winner
Griffin Poetry Prize
The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin.
Before 2022, the awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. ...
* 2010 ''One With Others'', finalist,
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
(Poetry)
*2010 ''One With Others'', winner,
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".[Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...]
[Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize]
" ''Academy of American Poets,'' 2018. Retrieved 10 Aug. 2018.
Works
This list of works has been taken mostly from C. D. Wright's entry at the
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreac ...
web page title
"C. D. Wright"
* 1977: ''Room Rented By A Single Woman'' (
Lost Roads)
* 1979: ''Terrorism'' (
Lost Roads)
* 1981: ''Translation of the Gospel Back into Tongues'' (State University of New York Press)
* 1986: ''Further Adventures with You'' (Carnegie Mellon University Press)
* 1991: ''String Light'' (University of Georgia Press)
* 1993: ''Just Whistle: A Valentine'' (Kelsey Street Press) - with photographs by
Deborah Luster
Deborah Luster (born 1951) is a photographic artist from Northwest Arkansas, US, and has been a professional photographer since the 1990s. Luster has at least one book in print, ''One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana'', and is known for using ...
* 1996: ''Tremble'' (Ecco)
* 1998: ''Deepstep Come Shining'' (
Copper Canyon Press
Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, founded in 1972 specializing exclusively in the publication of poetry. It is located in Port Townsend, Washington.
Copper Canyon Press publishes new collections of poetry by both popu ...
)
* 2002: ''Steal Away: New and Selected Poems'' (Copper Canyon Press) [shortlisted for the 2003 International
Griffin Poetry Prize
The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin.
Before 2022, the awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. ...
]
* 2003: ''One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana'' (Twin Palms) – with photographs by
Deborah Luster
Deborah Luster (born 1951) is a photographic artist from Northwest Arkansas, US, and has been a professional photographer since the 1990s. Luster has at least one book in print, ''One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana'', and is known for using ...
* 2005: ''Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil'' (Copper Canyon Press)
* 2007: ''One Big Self: An Investigation'' (Copper Canyon Press)
* 2008: ''Rising, Falling, Hovering'' (Copper Canyon Press) [winner of the 2009 International
Griffin Poetry Prize
The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin.
Before 2022, the awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. ...
]
* 2009: ''40 Watts'' (Octopus Books)
* 2010: ''One With Others
a little book of her days'' (Copper Canyon Press)
* 2011: ''Jean Valentine Abridged: Writing a Word; Changing It'' (Albion Press)
* 2012: ''The Other Hand'' (Horse Less Press)
* 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'' (Copper Canyon Press) – essays
* 2016: ''ShallCross'' (Copper Canyon Press)
References
External links
Author WebsiteGriffin Poetry Prize biographyProfile at The Whiting FoundationC. D. Wright—The Academy of American Poets"Only the crossing counts,"''Slate'' magazine
"Bent Tones" by C. D. WrightOverview Wright's work at ''Open Letters''C.D. Wright (1949-2016)tribute by Bloodaxe Books
*
C. D. Wright Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wright, Carolyn D.
1949 births
2016 deaths
MacArthur Fellows
Poets from Arkansas
Poets from Rhode Island
Brown University faculty
People from Mountain Home, Arkansas
Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty
Poets Laureate of Rhode Island
American women poets
20th-century American poets
21st-century American poets
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American women writers
American women academics