F

Franz Wright is at his best in this beautiful and startling collection.In these riveting poems as he considers his mortality the poet finds a new elation and clarity on the page handing over for our examination the flawed yet kneeling-in-gratitude self he has become.. Wright declares Ive said all that / I had to say. / In writing. / I signed my name. / Its deaths move. . F stands both for Franz the poet-speaker who represents all of us on our baffling lifelong journeys and for the alphabet the utility and sometimes brutality of our symbols. (It may be he jokes grimly his grade in life.) From Entries of the Cell the long central poem that details the loneliness of the single soul to short narrative prose poems and traditional lyrics Wright revels in the compensatory power of language observing the daytime headlights following a hearse or the wind blessing one by one the unlighted buds of the backbent peach trees unnoted return.