Wheeling Motel [Hardcover]

Franz Wright (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 15, 2009

In his tenth collection of poetry, Franz Wright gives us an exquisite book of reconciliation with the past and acceptance of what may come in the future.

From his earliest years, he writes in “Will,” he had “the gift of impermanence / so I would be ready, / accompanied / by a rage to prove them wrong / . . . and that I too was worthy of love.” This rage comes coupled with the poet’s own brand of love, what he calls “one / strange alone / heart’s wish / to help all / hearts.” Poetry is indeed Wright’s help, and he delivers it to us with a wry sense of the daily in America: in his wonderfully local relationship to God (whom he encounters along with a catfish in the emerald shallows of Walden Pond); in the little West Virginia motel of the title poem, on the banks of the great Ohio River, where “Tammy Wynette’s on the marquee” and he is visited by the figure of Walt Whitman, “examining the tear on a dead face.”

Here, in Wheeling Motel, Wright’s poetry continues to surprise us with its frank appraisal of our soul, and with his own combustible loneliness and unstoppable joy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Once more the Pulitzer Prize–winning Wright (God's Silence) delves into his own exceptionally troubled past and comes up with fractured and frightening—but also well-constructed and self-aware—poems about his former addictions, his inner depths and his recovery, giving thanks to his wife and to the Christian God. I don't want to see a doctor/ I want to kill a doctor, one poem opens. And this is my alone/ song, it isn't/ long. Wright's poetry of extremes has attracted both a wide audience and a sophisticated one: he speaks with terse authority about religious transcendence, crushing and even suicidal depression and well-known drug troubles—Pretty soon you won't be doing that to get high./ You'll be doing it to get dressed. If this collection differs from earlier volumes, it is in the kind and degree of attention that Wright pays to his father, the poet James Wright: There's this line in an unpublished poem of yours./ The river is like that,/ a blind familiar. Family matters, like much else, give Wright bleak grief: he turns, as he has often done in recent years, to religious faith, exploring his doubts but returning to his belief: The world didn't give me this/ word, but// the world cannot take it away. (Sept.)
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Review

“These new poems refract the light of the poet’s insightful, humorous, and often humble gaze in ways that are surprising and rewarding.” —America

“Uningratiating, bumptiously witty . . . and routinely surprising.” —The New York Times Book Review


From the Trade Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (September 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307265684
• ISBN-13: 978-0307265685
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.6 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,178,351 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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars some comfort November 3, 2010

By Edith Hankel

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Franz Wright's work gets both sparer and deeper but remains as startling as ever. He's found a faith that never seems to ooze out of his poems but instead gives a place to stand while he looks at a world both painful and beautiful. This is a remarkable follow-up to the sharp-edged poems in "God's Silence" -- the poems are no less sharp in their clarity, but you can't slit your wrists with these. Read "Association," for example, where Wright says, "Dawns when I can't sleep I walk,/in thought, all the way/around Walden.//My father loved Thoreau, I wish/he could have walked there/ with me once,//My hungover Virgil."

5.0 out of 5 stars ...walking on water, drowning in air. July 21, 2012

By Hard Cover

Format:Paperback

When I found Wheeling Motel I felt as though lightning had struck my soul. Wright's poetry was a turning point for me. This is deep poetry,the stuff that lives in the shadows and begs for the light of day.

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another beautiful collection September 15, 2009

By Daniel J. Ahearn

Format:Hardcover

Franz Wright is the poet of our generation.
Listen to him read these exquisite poems
Readings From Wheeling Motel