The Catfish

by Franz Wright

Poetry. Limited edition of 250 numbered copies. A collection of 21 poems that rip through the world-weary, grieving daily life of a poet and a man. As the original Odyssey by Homer, Franz Wright, reports more than with the dream language with the language of poetry the story of his life, the relationship to his father, to his wife and the world inside and outside of him. With delicacy he interns himself in those worlds sometimes overwhelmed by nostalgia and sometimes illuminated with an underglow of joy as in Elizabeth's Eyes or quiet happiness as in THE CATFISH. As a wise Telemachus he walks, reflects and expresses a sovereign balance of mind in "unseen supervision," "between time of ingestion and time of departure: undisturbed, unafraid, as all things are passing the unknown bird spoke: who will remember? And why should I care? I had my time. I got to be here."

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

About the author

Born in Vienna, Franz Wright is the author of fourteen collections of poetry. Walking to Martha's Vineyard (Knopf 2003) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His newest collections, God’s Silence, and Earlier Poems were published by Knopf in, 2006 & 2007. Wright’s other books include The Beforelife (2001), Ill Lit: New and Selected Poems (1998), Rorschach Test (1995), The Night World and the Word Night (1993), and Midnight Postscript (1993). Mr. Wright has also translated poems by René Char, Erica Pedretti, and Rainer Maria Rilke. He has received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, as well as grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Wright has taught in many colleges and universities, including Emerson College and the University of Arkansas. He is currently the writer-in-residence at Brandeis. He has also worked in a mental health clinic in Lexington, Massachusetts, and as a volunteer at the Center for Grieving Children.

Franz Wright, son of the poet James Wright, began writing when he was very young. At 15, he sent one of his poems to his absentee father, who wrote back, “You’re a poet. Welcome to hell.” James and Franz Wright are the only father and son to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In a short essay on writing, Franz writes, “Think of it: a writer actually possesses the power to alter his past, to change what was once experienced as defeat into victory and what was once experienced as speechless anguish into a stroke of great good fortune or even something approaching blessedness, depending upon what he does with that past, what he makes out of it.” Charles Simic has characterized Wright as a poetic miniaturist, whose "secret ambition is to write an epic on the inside of a matchbook cover." Time and again, Wright turns on a dime in a few brief lines, exposing the dark comedy and poignancy of his heightened perception.