Franz Wright

When I saw Franz Wright's poems here in Diode in issue 3.2, I wanted to come here and highlight them. They are wide ones that have a great sense of imagery--almost an ancient Egyptian vibe of Imagism, somehow, but not neo-classical. He's incredible. He almost evokes the pre-Grecian Egypt, before the time of Alexander. Here are more of his poems, and here's more information on him.

Here's an excerpt from "At the End":

Bar of jackals shunned by jackals, the scaries that frighten the scaries. Summit meeting of leading deceased souls, where eyes do the talking, in an atmosphere, an opulence [...]



One great poem of his is "Bees of Eleusis", here--and I'll excerpt a few lines from the end to give you a taste of him:
[...]                                                                                                              Men who 
bungled their way through the next eighteen centuries before finally descending into 
the earth themselves, and what they found there they used, and we thank you for 
destroying the destroyers of the world. And here at the end this is as good as any 
other entrance to the underplace, journey of the fallen leaf back to the branch, to the 
bees of Eleusis among olive blossoms, untroubled among crimson wildflowers. Four 
thousand years later: same flowers, same bees.



And from "Woman Falling":

It’s so strange you should suddenly be here, how did that happen, in your favorite place, 
that witchy old orange orchard, the very spot [...]