Wright’s prose is easy on the ear, not unserious but also not afraid to be funny, and lightened by a kind of confidence you find, one might assume, after decades of writing without subscribing to any particular school: “Obsession” might be the right word, though that sounds too fatalistic, which this book is not, and undermines the ambulatory course through science, history, photography, and family this book makes. At its core, the book is an extensively researched examination, meditation, or love letter to the beech tree. What we have in Casting, then, is more like an artifact of imagination, the poet immersed in her fieldwork. While the book offers us technically no closure per se, its openness is not out of step with the mode of investigation on display that is, of following one’s nose, watching what connections take hold. Add to this list of works the posthumously published and no less ambitious Casting Deep Shade, recently released from Copper Canyon Press. At the same time, the particularity of place she’d rendered even in her earliest poems were felt, to the end of her career, through an inimitable style. The trajectory of work she left us with is just that: a trajectory, its forward momentum felt in her insistence on enlarging her scope, each book seeming to attain higher ground than its predecessor. Wright passed away at the beginning of 2016. Wright’s Casting Deep Shade - by Ben Rutherfurd Wright taught at Brown University for over thirty years.A Review of C.D.
Wright has received numerous honors for her poetry, including the National Book Critics Circle Award. She did not want the stump to linger as a reminder.īorn in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, C. Herrick wanted the tree cut to the grass. Herrick said her grandson was going to be so mad when he came to town to find his favorite climber gone. George and Nannette Herrick allowed me to watch their best-loved beech be brought to the ground. Honoring Wright’s lifelong fascination with books as objects, this final work is a three-panel hardcover that encloses the body of text, illustrated with striking color photographs of beech trees by artist Denny Moers. Written in Wright’s singular prosimetric style, this “memoir with beech trees” demonstrates the power of words to conserve, preserve, and bear witness. Before Wright’s unexpected death in 2016, she was deeply engaged in years of ambling research to better know this tree-she visited hundreds of beech trees, interviewed arborists, and delved into the etymology, folk lore, and American history of the species. Wright has been writing some of the greatest poetry-cum-prose you can find in American literature.” -Dave EggersĬasting Deep Shade is a passionate, poetic exploration of humanity’s shared history with the beech tree. Wright belongs to a school of exactly one.” -The New York Times
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