Thursday, September 17, 2009

Fried on Wright

Daisy Fried reviews Wheeling Motel, Franz Wright's new book of poetry, in the New York Times.

She writes, "Franz Wright is uningratiating, bumptiously witty, inexhaustibly joyless and routinely surprising. Individual moments — this line break, that bit of syntax — fascinate even when individual poems fail to assert themselves as memorable. But Wright’s dark epiphanies, surging sincerities and ironic outbursts build incrementally from poem to poem."

The title poem appeared in The New Yorker in 2007.

2 comments:

F.W. said...

Anyone who suggests, as little Daisy does, that I care more about myself than the suicide of a child, is simply a monster. The review is a series of contradictory remarks--is it "un-fun" to juxtapose Tammy Wynette and Plato as I do in the title poem? (But then Daisy would have had to have known that I am echoing Socrates' last words before hemlock-death, "I go to death, you to life, etc.) She does not know it and illiterates should not be writing about their betters, frankly. FW

Anonymous said...

I am going to buy this book because FW wrote that illiterates should not be writing about their betters and therefore I am in love.

--Amanda

P.S. D'Anne--I don't exactly understand why you included this on your blog? Did you read the book and especially like it? Does it relate to monkeys in some way? Or what?