2010 National Book Award Finalist,
Poetry
C.D. Wright
One with Others
Copper Canyon Press
Photo credit: Forrest Gander
ABOUT THE BOOK
C.D. Wright examines a racist event in her native Arkansas and creates a layered, nuanced, and riveting tribute to V.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C.D. Wright
has published a dozen books of poetry and prose, including
the recent volumes One Big Self: An Investigation
and Rising Falling Hovering, which received
the Griffin Poetry Award. A MacArthur Fellow, she teaches
at Brown University and lives outside Providence, Rhode
Island.
SUGGESTED LINKS
Wright's Wikipedia entry
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_D._Wright
Wright's page at poets.org
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/728
Looking for "one
untranslatable song": An interview with C.D. Wright
By Kent Johnson, from Jacket 15.
http://www.jacketmagazine.com/15/cdwright-iv.html
EXCERPT
from One With Others by C.D. Wright
If white people can ride down the highways
with guns in their trucks
I can walk down the highway unarmed
Scott Bond, born a slave, became
a millionaire. Wouldn’t you like to run wild
run free. The Very Reverend Al Green
hailed from here. Sonny Liston a few miles west,
San Slough. Head hardened
on hickory sticks. A reporter asks a family
of sharecroppers quietly watching the procession,
Does this walk mean anything to you.
The father says, the others nod,
It means that Sweet Willie Wine is walking.
The cool water is for white/
the sun-heated for black
This chair is not for you [N-word]/ it is for the white
buttock
This textbook/ is nearly new/ is not for you [N-word]
This plot of ground does not hold black bones
Today the sermon once again “Segregation After
Death.”