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.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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