Word: wrighting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...newcomers have neither the respect for Congress nor the experience in shaping legislation that can be acquired only through years of service. There is considerable tension, in fact, between the oldtimers and the freshmen. "The intellectual and educational level of Congress has increased," says Democratic House Leader Jim Wright. "But the moral stamina in terms of basic integrity and guts has declined. Members are now more concerned about image and less about substance...
...Wright does tend sometimes to toss over his shoulder the wealth of material he sees. In "Old Bud," he writes, "His unbelievable Adam's apple purpled and honed like the burl on the root of a white oak, and he sang his God Damns in despair." Now you see it, now you' don't--the white oak disappears, and the central character. Old Bud, who does has the potential to run wild and become larger than the poem, twists into another image. In cases like these, the prose poem proves even more confining for Wright than the traditional form; everything...
...WRIGHT WORKS BEST in the free verse form, where he lets each idea run to the end of its rope. In these poems, he conveys a sense of the supernatural and twists conventional symbolism until it imparts an eerie, ephemeral flavor. Nature can be cruel here. In "The Vestal in the Forum," he writes...
...stone girl" floats in and out of the poem until she becomes a face Wright remembers, while the wind, which one would expect to triumph at the end, fades out like a dream scene. The reverse is central to the poem, and Wright makes it universal simply by allowing it to grow larger than the words. Similarly, in "Wherever Home Is," he allows a statue of Leonardo da Vinci to filter into his mind and emerge uncontrollable on paper. He relishes the flavor of da Vinci's life and the historical impression he is left with: affectionately he calls Leonardo...
...seems remarkable that such a cohesive collection of poems was released after Wright's death--however, it is worth nothing that the manuscript was virtually complete when he died in 1980. The poems seem to have been written by someone who knew he would die, but they convey an appreciation of life that is at once quiet and fierce, a rare zeal that comes only from knowing life well...