Customer Reviews

Steal Away: Selected and New Poems

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I first read this book, I was not familiar with Wright's work. The eroticism of her works are sandwiched and juxtaposted by a syntax that pushes language and body out into an open space. The "Girlfriend" poems are particular telling of this mixing and distorting of syntax of English and the syntax of the body. Admittedly, this book is not for everyone; but poetry never is. If you enjoy sensual poets like Diane Di Prima or intensely intellectual poets like John Ashberry, Bin Ranke, and Wallace Stevens: Wright's words will surely speak to you. There is a diversity of culture and of technique, but a unity of vision that any poet can benefit from. I can only wish more poets were like her.

If you're looking for a book to hang out with for the whole summer Steal Away is the one. It presents a range of Wright's work, from her early lyrics to impassioned formal experimentation. Wright stands at the place where rivers meet in contemporary poetry. She is both bighearted and fierce. I would dare say she is the one holding the light.

Wright's work is unceasingly fresh and visionary. I never tire of reading her work. She is truly one of the best poets pushing a pen in America. Keep on!

Wright is a poet brave enough to trust and follow the meanderings of her mind and the results are often amazing for several lines at a time, but rarely for a whole poem. She has a great eye and pulls of some stunning visual description, but to put it politely, there isn't much of an intellect backing up these special effects and too many of the poems come out mushy and sentimental. The work is lazy, but she does have a wry off-handed sense of humor that often rescues the work from banality.

Wright's aesthetic is one of self-congratulatory linguistic and philosophical laziness. Most of her poems look like they were tossed off in five minutes and never revised, which is why her work is a favorite of the "post-post" club. Except for a handful of good prose poems and certain parts of Deepstep Come Shining (Wright's only even halfway good book, of which too little is included in this collected), these poems are downright pointless and boring.