This is the aim of C.D. Wright’s One Big Self, an incredible book of poetry that also function

This is the aim of C.D. Wright’s One Big Self, an incredible book of poetry that also functions as a sort of investigative journalism. In some ways, I read this book before I was ready to read this book; in others, I read this book exactly when I needed.

It was difficult to hear of Wright’s passing yesterday. She was legendary in my home state of Arkansas, which was her birth state and where she studied. What Arkansas poet was not moved by her work? By Lost Roads or Frank Stanford, to both of which she is inextricably tied?

Sitting with her words and the thought of her absence this morning /  a few lines from One Big Self:

“All you posses is your soul whose mold you already deformed.”

“An eye for an eye          it says in Exodus / Whose eye?”

“The air is foul. The dirt is gumbo. Avoid all physical contact. Come nightfall the bugs will carry you off.”

“No condoms for the heart”