Poetry. Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Investigative journalism is the poet's realm when C.D. Wright returns to her native Arkansas and examines an explosive incident from the Civil Rights movement. Wright interweaves oral histories, hymns, lists, newspaper accounts, and personal memories—especially those of her incandescent mentor, Mrs. Vititow—with the voices of witnesses, neighbors, police, activists, and black students who were rounded up and detained in an empty public swimming pool. This history leaps howling off the page.
Author City: PROVIDENCE, RI USA
C.D. Wright is the author of a dozen collections of poetry and prose. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Wright is a professor of English at Brown University and lives outside Providence, Rhode Island.
Reviews and Other Links
Steven Karl @ Coldfront
Dana Jennings @ The New York Times
Dan Chiasson's Eleven Best Poetry Books of 2010 in The New Yorker
One of Library Journal's Five Best Poetry Books of 2010
One of Anis Shivani's 17 Most Important Poetry Books of Fall 2010 @ The Huffington Post
The Year's Best Poetry: Meghan O'Rourke @ NPR
Craig Morgan Teicher @ NBCC's Critical Mass
Michael Klein @ THEthe Poetry
The Believer Magazine Readers' Top Twenty Favorite Poetry Books Published in 2010