Last month, Book Lovers Among Students met to discuss Franz Wright’s celebrated book of poems Walking to Martha’s Vineyard (2003). Hauntingly beautiful, minimalistic, but also brutally honest and seasoned with a great deal of sense of humor, these poems explore the themes of depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, as well as recovery, Catholic faith, human mortality, spirituality and gratitude. Wright claimed in one of his interviews that a lot of poems published in Walking to Martha’s Vineyard were “written either walking to, during, or walking home from mass. I would get home and just type them out, and often I wouldn't revise them.” While the second part of that statement was generally received with some deal of skepticism (considering the formal mastery demonstrated by the author in these poems), the remark about the importance of Catholic faith inspired us to discuss the status of religious poetry in Academia and beyond. Although religious poetry might be regarded as “a song of the past”, at least by the contemporary reader influenced by modernism, post-modernism and avant-garde writings in general, there exists a powerful trend in American poetry, which dates back to Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and confessional poetry, that embraces spirituality as its main theme. Wright is both a continuator of that tradition and a reformer in the field, stating that honesty of the experience (of both writing and reading) is his key objective. In an interview with Lawrence F. Laban (Poetry Center, The University of Arizona), Wright argues that “[a]nyone can write obscure poetry filled with mysterious but ultimately shallow and pointless non sequitur-like gibberish. Language like this is extremely dangerous (...) (It is also, incidentally, the best way to conceal a lack of talent for writing, or a lack of experience, of anything important to say.) (...) Great poetry that can be read by any person with a 6th grade reading ability, writing that is not infected with the weird malaise of irony, that is writing of primal sincerity and devotion to the experiences of real human beings in all times and places, has a chance of surviving.” The cynical reader will discredit Wright’s power; the honest reader will embrace him in all his beauty.
by Małgorzata Olsza
