ILL LIT: Selected & New Poems [Paperback]

Franz Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1998

Franz Wright's Ill Lit brings together a substantial selection of poems from earlier volumes, some of them significantly revised by the author, and a group of twenty-one new poems, along with a selection of translations. A courageous writer who has, in his words, committed himself to the task of "giving a voice to conditions or states of mind normally associated with speechlessness," Franz Wright demonstrates here, again and again, his ability to make poems that are haunting, somber, and luminous.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"This is a terrific book by a terrific poet. Never has any poet, anywhere, been so dark-minded and at the same time so almost playful, so childlike about it all. A unique and major talent." --Donald Justice

Product Details

• Paperback: 186 pages
• Publisher: Oberlin College Press; 1 edition (December 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932440835
• ISBN-13: 978-0932440839
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,523,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Franz Wright's recent works include Earlier Poems, God's Silence, and The Beforelife (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). In 2004 his Walking to Martha's Vineyard received the Pulitzer Prize. He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, among other honors. He currently lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, with his wife, the translator and writer Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one step removed from silence, April 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: ILL LIT: Selected & New Poems (Hardcover)

I've been following Wright's career for years and find his compelling work burrows into the heart of the self--the mind and heart that speaks to itself--like no other poet. His work is heartbreaking as well as desperately funny. And his ability to hauntingly capture a state of mind using a few scattered images is frightening and magical. No poet since Frank Stanford has startled and excited me this much. I will read every poem of his I can get my hands on.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Speaking in silence, November 15, 2004

By 

J from NY (New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: ILL LIT: Selected & New Poems (Paperback)

Franz Wright's "Ill Lit" is a challenging, alternately intellectual and poetic collection. Wright does an almost superhuman job of articulating the most minute aspects of the manifold. The overall feel of the work is a man writing from the deepest, darkest corners of mind and memory without once becoming vulgar or sordid. He does in those poems what Derrida and the deconstructionist crew aimed for but never achieved: destroying all dichotomies, eliminating the field between the verbal and the actual. "Say My Name" was my favorite piece: "I'd be entombed inside a period/in the closed book/in the huge dark/of St. Paul's/where we used to meet". This is more than recommended: Wright's voice is a like a vibrantly dim bulb flickering in the night of human existence.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a poet of breathless experimentation, May 17, 2002

By 

"hirofantv" (tomorrow) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ILL LIT: Selected & New Poems (Hardcover)

Being son of the eminent James Wright, Franz has a lot looming over him. He responds to his world by fragmenting it into absolute terseness, collecting the shards of feeling & experience in a manner almost venomous but so tender. He writes with blindingly crisp ellipticism & manipulation of signifier & signified, traveling at speeds twice as fast as an omitted comma.