Cooling Time

December 20, 2004
A determined and idiosyncratic book of critical thoughts—and not a "poet's memoir" à la Nick Flynn or Katy Lederer—Wright's latest offers criticism, speculation, and personal recollection, most of it divided into self-sufficient prose units, from one sentence to several pages in length. Though she teaches at Brown University in Rhode Island, Wright, who won a MacArthur genius grant this year, hails from the Ozarks, as both her matter and manner often remind us: "I poetry... I also arkansas," she writes; "sometimes these verbs coalesce. Sometimes they trot off in opposite directions." Though some paragraphs, many of which are culled from previously published essays, offer sharply remembered scenes, Wright (Steal Away
) focuses less on the major events in her life than on the writers whose work has mattered to her, some famous (Gertrude Stein), some not (Besmilr Brigham). Readers in the know will decode information about Wright's poet-partner Forrest Gander. The longest memoiristic passage concerns an English teacher; another pokes fun at American poets' habit of joining rival schools, and another describes a car trip through the American Southeast, with its "Landscape of big dogs, big melons, big-car longings and dreams big as distant capitals." Readers who seek not autobiography but cogent thoughts, ideas, quotable claims about the state of the art (or about the state of Arkansas) will find themselves delighted.

February 15, 2005
Newly designated as a MacArthur "genius," Wright presents a saucy " ars poetica" , a set of flinty prose poems about the art of poetry in general, and her Arkansas-bred aesthetic in particular. Poetry about poetry might sound deadly, but it is, in fact, a supple tradition used to broach a spectrum of personal and social concerns, beginning with the forces that induced one to become a poet in the first place. Wright writes, "Of the choices revealed to me, crime and art were the only ones with any sex appeal," hence her calling as a poet who ponders art and the art of being, crime and crimes against art. As her subtitle implies, poetry has a precarious hold on life in America, so she musters her case and defends her beloved practice with a bravura pastiche of memoir, poetry, criticism, and sass. Along the way she pays scintillating tribute to writers (Gertrude Stein), painters (Georgia O'Keeffe), and musicians (Miles Davis), expresses resistance to and appreciation of the academy, and doesn't neglect the landscape or love. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)