Wheeling Motel

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 poets own brand of love what he calls one / strange alone / hearts wish / to help all / hearts. Poetry is indeed Wrights 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 Wynettes on the marquee and he is visited by the figure of Walt Whitman examining the tear on a dead face. Here in Wheeling Motel Wrights poetry continues to surprise us with its frank appraisal of our soul and with his own combustible loneliness and unstoppable joy.