42 Pages
Publisher: Vallum
Purchase includes: PDF

Recurring Awakening tilts precariously on the threshold of dream and waking reality, resting neither in physical, sensory experience nor bodiless spatial exploration. In this collection of poems and prose, Franz Wright traverses time and space, visiting the stars, childhood and the unexplored microcosm of the buds of a familiar peach tree. From a place of solitude, he urgently asks large and largely unanswerable questions directed at nobody, everybody and you. He comes to meet his own mortality and mutely inquires the validity of his existence altogether. As he draws back to observe present reality and painful memories, Wright’s words taste bitter and cold. Then, soon enough, he takes to the curious exploration of both the minutely detailed and infinitely expansive. Pages turn over like someone inspecting his own hands, asking, “I am still here. Aren’t I?”

Franz Wright is the author of some 20 books of poetry and translations, including Walking to Martha's Vineyard, which received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. His recent book, published by Knopf in 2006, is called God's Silence. He lives in Massachusetts.