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Steal Away: Selected and New Poems
C.D. Wright is a fearless poet long admired for her authentically erotic verse. With a Southern accent and cinematic eye she couples strangeness with uncanny accuracy, bundling fragments of stories to create poems that are, as she describes them, "succinct novels." Wright’s poems are simultaneously modern and deeply primal; they are pheromonal . Gathering work from her eight previous volumes, Steal Away weaves new work with Wright’s best lyrics, narratives, prose poems, and odes. You didn’t know my weariness, error, incapacity,
I was the poet
of shadow work and towns with quarter-inch
phone books, of failed
roadside zoos. The poet of yard eggs and
sharpening shops,
jobs at the weapons plant and the Maybelline
factory on the penitentiary road.
—from "Our Dust" "Wright shrinks back from nothing."— Voice Literary Supplement "Wright is one of America’s oddest, best, and most appealing poets."— Publishers Weekly "C.D. Wright’s best new poems are defiant, erotic, and disjunctive, easy to be moved by, hard to assemble, and like nothing else being made today."— Boston Phoenix C.D. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She has published nine collections of poetry, served as State Poet of Rhode Island, and earned many awards, including a Lannan Literary Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches at Brown University and is presently at work on a poetry-and-photographic documentary of Louisiana prisoners. Also Available by C.D. Wright
Deepstep Come Shining
TP $14.00, 1-55659-092-X • CUSA
TC $22.00, 1-55659-093-8 • CUSA
I was the poet
of shadow work and towns with quarter-inch
phone books, of failed
roadside zoos. The poet of yard eggs and
sharpening shops,
jobs at the weapons plant and the Maybelline
factory on the penitentiary road.
—from "Our Dust" "Wright shrinks back from nothing."— Voice Literary Supplement "Wright is one of America’s oddest, best, and most appealing poets."— Publishers Weekly "C.D. Wright’s best new poems are defiant, erotic, and disjunctive, easy to be moved by, hard to assemble, and like nothing else being made today."— Boston Phoenix C.D. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She has published nine collections of poetry, served as State Poet of Rhode Island, and earned many awards, including a Lannan Literary Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches at Brown University and is presently at work on a poetry-and-photographic documentary of Louisiana prisoners. Also Available by C.D. Wright
Deepstep Come Shining
TP $14.00, 1-55659-092-X • CUSA
TC $22.00, 1-55659-093-8 • CUSA
- GenresPoetryContemporary
280 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
26 people are currently reading
637 people want to read
About the author
C.D. Wright
43 books99 followersC. D. Wright was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas. She earned a BA in French from Memphis State College (now the University of Memphis) in 1971 and briefly attended law school before leaving to pursue an MFA from the University of Arkansas, which she received in 1976. Her poetry thesis was titled Alla Breve Loving.
In 1977 the publishing company founded by Frank Stanford, Lost Roads Publishers, published Wright's first collection, Room Rented by A Single Woman. After Stanford died in 1978, Wright took over Lost Roads, continuing the mission of publishing new poets and starting the practice of publishing translations. In 1979, she moved to San Francisco, where she met poet Forrest Gander. Wright and Gander married in 1983 and had a son, Brecht, and co-edited Lost Roads until 2005.
In 1981, Wright lived in Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico and completed her third book of poems, Translation of the Gospel Back into Tongues. In 1983 she moved to Providence, Rhode Island to teach writing at Brown University as the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English. In 2013,
C.D. Wright died on January 12, 2016 at the age of 67 in Barrington, Rhode Island.
In 1977 the publishing company founded by Frank Stanford, Lost Roads Publishers, published Wright's first collection, Room Rented by A Single Woman. After Stanford died in 1978, Wright took over Lost Roads, continuing the mission of publishing new poets and starting the practice of publishing translations. In 1979, she moved to San Francisco, where she met poet Forrest Gander. Wright and Gander married in 1983 and had a son, Brecht, and co-edited Lost Roads until 2005.
In 1981, Wright lived in Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico and completed her third book of poems, Translation of the Gospel Back into Tongues. In 1983 she moved to Providence, Rhode Island to teach writing at Brown University as the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English. In 2013,
C.D. Wright died on January 12, 2016 at the age of 67 in Barrington, Rhode Island.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
July 13, 2007
I love C.D. Wright, and I'm not afraid to say it. For over twenty years, she's been at the forefront of verse, form, and language.
Steal Away collects selected verse from 1982 until the present, showcasing her early whit and play with form and language, her movements marrying narrative and image, and her perfection of the list poem. She changes form and style as easily as you or I might our socks. Her partnering of line to form, her use of punctuation as line break and line break as punctuation, and space as breath, are the building blocks of her work. The things many poets struggle to combine in their own poetry kitchens, C.D. Wright wields with ease and grace.
Her subjects are as varied as her approaches. In one poem she may weave the day to day of motherhood as a literal laundry list, and in another may confront the body politic with a series of periodless prose blocks. She muses on seasons and urban streetscapes in semi-traditional line and meter on one page, only to then launch into twenty pages of post-surrealist Oppenesque lines which using no space and changing twenty aesthetic approaches across the entire span.
The reason I myself love C.D. Wright, is because I can see in her the poetic ingredients that I love to reach back into for my own work; Language Poetry, New York School, Black Mountain, Surrealism, Modernism, Imagism (not to mention a political feminism so subtle as to be screaming), she is the culmination of 20th century American poetry. This book is a must read for anyone writing today, one of the pivotal benchmarks for we younger poets as we look to write our way into the next century.
Steal Away collects selected verse from 1982 until the present, showcasing her early whit and play with form and language, her movements marrying narrative and image, and her perfection of the list poem. She changes form and style as easily as you or I might our socks. Her partnering of line to form, her use of punctuation as line break and line break as punctuation, and space as breath, are the building blocks of her work. The things many poets struggle to combine in their own poetry kitchens, C.D. Wright wields with ease and grace.
Her subjects are as varied as her approaches. In one poem she may weave the day to day of motherhood as a literal laundry list, and in another may confront the body politic with a series of periodless prose blocks. She muses on seasons and urban streetscapes in semi-traditional line and meter on one page, only to then launch into twenty pages of post-surrealist Oppenesque lines which using no space and changing twenty aesthetic approaches across the entire span.
The reason I myself love C.D. Wright, is because I can see in her the poetic ingredients that I love to reach back into for my own work; Language Poetry, New York School, Black Mountain, Surrealism, Modernism, Imagism (not to mention a political feminism so subtle as to be screaming), she is the culmination of 20th century American poetry. This book is a must read for anyone writing today, one of the pivotal benchmarks for we younger poets as we look to write our way into the next century.
March 1, 2023
Absolutely incredible.
May 7, 2016
Do I have a high opinion of poetry because I don’t understand it? It’s like watching a telenovela, is it so entertaining because I don’t understand Spanish and fill in the blanks of my knowledge with the promise of something better? Sometimes I think so, and sometimes I think not, but it doesn’t matter because at the end of the page I’m having a good time. Only bits and pieces of STEAL AWAY: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS by C.D. Wright were comprehensible for me. I picked up on the eroticism, but it was masked in imagery far less explicit than I’m familiar with from my days editing porn mags. That’s a good thing. I could use more subtly and an organic intimacy over narratives that operate like a penis pump. There are stories here as well as verse, cryptic yet specific, evocative, personal and political. I rode Wright’s fine language and was never disappointed where it took me. There’s something I love about reading what I don’t get but gets me to keep reading.
January 15, 2008
CD was really the first poet I ever read that swept away all the (old, musty) ideas about poetry I had. Sharon Olds did not shock or distrub me half as much as CD - what she does with content and form are incredible. All in all, her poems are to be experienced, much like a great movie or crazy dream.
July 20, 2023
6 stars...
Wonderful and diverse in style and vernacular. I wish I had read CD White sooner. It took me forever to read this book because it made me stop and start, over and over, I wrote down notes and then would get inspired to write a poem more than once.
Hands down the best darn poem is "Our Dust".
I have seen myself/in the black car. I have seen the retreat/of the black car.
Just wow, wow, wow.
Wonderful and diverse in style and vernacular. I wish I had read CD White sooner. It took me forever to read this book because it made me stop and start, over and over, I wrote down notes and then would get inspired to write a poem more than once.
Hands down the best darn poem is "Our Dust".
I have seen myself/in the black car. I have seen the retreat/of the black car.
Just wow, wow, wow.
December 10, 2025
contemporary american poetry
“it was one of those
common bodies that felt it could not exist without loving,
but has in fact gone on and one without love.
like a cave that has stopped growing, we don’t call it dead, but dormant.”
“it was one of those
common bodies that felt it could not exist without loving,
but has in fact gone on and one without love.
like a cave that has stopped growing, we don’t call it dead, but dormant.”
May 15, 2025
“And how does a body break
bread with the word when the word
has broken. Again. And. Again.” - “More Blues and the Abstract Truth”
bread with the word when the word
has broken. Again. And. Again.” - “More Blues and the Abstract Truth”
June 30, 2022
'Well. Then. You say Grandmother
let me just ask you this:
How does a body rise up again and rinse
her mouth from the tap. And how
does a body put in a plum tree
or lie again on top of another body
or string a trellis. Or go on drying
the flatware. Fix rainbow trout. Grout the tile.
Buy a bag of onions. Beat an egg stiff. Yes,
how does the cat continue
to lick itself from toenail to tail hole.
And how does a body break
bread with the word when the word
has broken. Again. And. Again.
With the wine. And the loaf.
And the excellent glass
of the body. And she says,
Eve. If. The. Sky. Is. Falling.
My. Peace. Rose. Is. In. Bloom.'
(from 'More Blues And the Abstract Truth' in 'String Light', p66)
let me just ask you this:
How does a body rise up again and rinse
her mouth from the tap. And how
does a body put in a plum tree
or lie again on top of another body
or string a trellis. Or go on drying
the flatware. Fix rainbow trout. Grout the tile.
Buy a bag of onions. Beat an egg stiff. Yes,
how does the cat continue
to lick itself from toenail to tail hole.
And how does a body break
bread with the word when the word
has broken. Again. And. Again.
With the wine. And the loaf.
And the excellent glass
of the body. And she says,
Eve. If. The. Sky. Is. Falling.
My. Peace. Rose. Is. In. Bloom.'
(from 'More Blues And the Abstract Truth' in 'String Light', p66)
April 8, 2018
Many of C.D. Wright's poems would probably turn off novice poetry readers. They're opaque. Wright's poetic strategy is tough love: get comfortable with disorientation or go away. To say it another way, get lost or get lost. She claims space with energy, creating gaps in lines and deep indents, commanding you to translate what you see into sound and rhythm, making you figure out how to breathe and do it all. At times irritating but almost always impressive, Wright seizes language and the page, refusing to leave them as you thought they were.
September 8, 2018
Pretty great collection - recommend it as a good headway into C.D. Wright
May 13, 2011
I've taken a daily drink from this book of selected for the last couple of months, just before sitting at the writing desk. ("Something about writing by the kingly light" (from CDW's "Voice of the Ridge")
I remain hungry for her work -- it's atmospheric, erotic, unflinching, storied. She's a guru for me. She is all texture.
from "Ozark Odes":
"I can still see Cuddihy's sisters
trimming the red tufts
under one another's arms."
from the "Girlfriend Poems":
"Awake ye and come to our house
Come running fly if you can"
from "Remarks on Color":
"shacks ringed with day lilies, then a columned house in shade"
I remain hungry for her work -- it's atmospheric, erotic, unflinching, storied. She's a guru for me. She is all texture.
from "Ozark Odes":
"I can still see Cuddihy's sisters
trimming the red tufts
under one another's arms."
from the "Girlfriend Poems":
"Awake ye and come to our house
Come running fly if you can"
from "Remarks on Color":
"shacks ringed with day lilies, then a columned house in shade"
April 1, 2010
I fear that I started this collection with overblown hopes. It was good and I enjoyed it. However, I fear I may have to compare C.D. Wright to Pearl Jam; a large portion of her work did not resonate with me, but when it did, it vibrated my bones.
Her rural yet eloquent approach to language was rewarding, and she handled uncomfortable aspects of humanity with skill.
Some of her stuff was too experimental for me, and in some poems she seemed to punctuate the poem to make it intentionally unreadable.
Her rural yet eloquent approach to language was rewarding, and she handled uncomfortable aspects of humanity with skill.
Some of her stuff was too experimental for me, and in some poems she seemed to punctuate the poem to make it intentionally unreadable.
March 1, 2016
Her earlier poetry from the first half of the collection was too opaque for me. Phrases so seemingly random or personal that they could mean anything to anybody and therefore meant nothing. I responded more to her work from the mid-90's on, and the Louisiana prison poems. I'd like to see the photography that I understand went with that project.
Her work is not hard to read, but demands attention to get the most from it as it is very non-linear. I learned about Wright after hearing about her recent death. I'm now going on to read "Rising, Falling, Hovering" (2009).
Her work is not hard to read, but demands attention to get the most from it as it is very non-linear. I learned about Wright after hearing about her recent death. I'm now going on to read "Rising, Falling, Hovering" (2009).
January 17, 2016
In a week of very sad deaths of beloved figures, C.D. Wright's was quietly reported, little noted outside the literary world. I was only passingly familiar with her poetry but was reminded of just how elegant, bold, and surprisingly funny her work is as it was reproduced in obituaries and tributes. This is a marvellous collection - there is something fine in nearly every poem, and some are downright perfection.
February 9, 2008
Though this selected compiles complete versions of a few of her books, the excisions made to Deepstep Come Shining are problematic. . . i think most people that are introduced to Deepstep via this collection won't be encouraged to read the complete text. . . and it should be read in its entirety as it's fabulous!
December 15, 2009
"her warmth, her terrible warmth flooded the tone." Southern, white woman who knows whiteness is a race. Voice. Adult sex and love stories. Mysterious. "An unsmiling blond." That's good enough for me.
September 9, 2025
for contemporary american poetry.
“it is one of those
common bodies that felt it could not exist without loving, but has in fact gone on and on without love.
like a cave that has stopped growing, we don’t call it dead, but dormant.”
“it is one of those
common bodies that felt it could not exist without loving, but has in fact gone on and on without love.
like a cave that has stopped growing, we don’t call it dead, but dormant.”
August 24, 2007
This is a great Collected. I really like the poems from Just Whistle.
November 25, 2007
She has a way of capturing me in each poem one way or another she is brilliant. its the form and the subjects, so easy, so graceful.
January 10, 2008
one of my all time favorite collections of poetry
November 19, 2008
Fascinating, inventive, and... deeply carnal. This book changed everything I thought I understood about poetry.
March 4, 2009
My other favorite poet...
May 28, 2010
will definitely have to read this book a second time
February 6, 2016
Remarkable sampling of the great American poet. She was perhaps the finest contemporary erotic poet I have read. I want to know more of her work.
March 29, 2016
Great. Title. Great. Book.
February 27, 2008
The retablos show Wright at her playful best.
April 4, 2009
This is my very favorite book, and I am always reading it.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews