Carolyn D. Wright

Carolyn D. Wright
Born	Carolyn Doris Wright (1949-01-06)January 6, 1949 Mountain Home, Arkansas
Died	January 12, 2016(2016-01-12) (aged 67) Barrington, Rhode Island
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Memphis, University of Arkansas
Occupation	Poetry
Known for	MacArthur Fellowship

Carolyn D. "C. D." Wright (January 6, 1949 – January 12, 2016) was an American poet.^[1]

Background

C. D. Wright was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas to a chancery judge and a court reporter. 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.^[2]

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.^[3] In 2013, Wright was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.^[4] Stephen Burt has described her as an Elliptical Poet,^[5] but that was not a term that Burt used in an essay he published as a tribute to Wright just after her death.^[6] As Joel Brouwer has said, she "…belongs to a school of exactly one."^[7]

C.D. Wright died on January 12, 2016 at the age of 67.^[8] Her husband reported that she "died peacefully in her sleep of thrombosis, a clot, after an overly long flight from Chile." At the time of her death, she was living in Barrington, Rhode Island.^[9]

Poetry

Wright's poetry 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 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.^[10]

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." ^[11]

Wright has published literary maps of both Rhode Island and Arkansas.^[12] 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^[13] (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) contains just the poems. Her poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and many other anthologies. One With Others^[14] (Copper Canyon Press, 2010) 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 her death in January 2016, Copper Canyon Press 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,^[15] a book of prosimetric essays, and ShallCross,^[16] a book of both short and long form poems.

Awards

John Reed, David Biespiel and Wright at the after party for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, March 2012

• 1987 Guggenheim Fellowship^[17]
• 1989 Whiting Award
• 1994 Poet Laureate of the state of Rhode Island
• 1999 Foundation for Contemporary Arts, grant
• 2004 MacArthur Fellowship^[18]
• 2009 Rising, Falling, Hovering winner Griffin Poetry Prize^[19]
• 2010 One With Others, nominee National Book Award (Poetry)^[20]
• 2010 One With Others, winner National Book Critics Circle Award (Poetry)

Works

This list of works has been taken mostly from C. D. Wright's entry at the Academy of American Poets web page titled "C. D. Wright".

References

External links

External media

Audio
.mp3 recording of Wright reading from "One Big Self" during the Key West Literary Seminar, 2003
Video
Griffin Poetry Prize readings, including video clips
Interview with CD Wright on Words on a Wire
C.D. Wright reading for UC Berkeley's Holloway Series. October 23, 2014.

• Griffin Poetry Prize biography
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation
• C. D. Wright--The Academy of American Poets
• "Interview", Kent Johnson, Jacket Magazine
• "Only the crossing counts," Slate magazine
• Bent Tones by C. D. Wright
• Overview Wright's work at Open Letters
• C.D. Wright (1949-2016) tribute by Bloodaxe Books