The Long Shadow of Little Rock
Start Your Engines!

Deepstep Come Shining

Rebellious and fiercely lyrical, the poems of C.D. Wright incorporate elements of disjunction and odd juxtaposition in their exploration of unfolding context. “In my book,” she writes, “poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.”

C.D. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She has received numerous awards for her work, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Letters, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation. She teaches at Brown University in Rhode Island.

“Expertly elliptical phrasings, and an uncounterfeitable, generous feel for real people, bodies and places, have lately made Wright one of America’s oddest, best and most appealing poets. Her tenth book consists of a single long poem whose sentences, segments and prose-blocks weave loosely around and about, and grow out of, a road trip through the rural South. Clipped twangs, lyrical ‘goblets of magnolialight, ‘ and recurrent, mysterious, semi-allegorical figures like ‘the snakeman’ and ‘the boneman’ share space with place names, lexicographies, exhortations and wacky graffiti (‘God is Louise’)…. cherish Wright’s latest ‘once-and-for-all thing, opaque and revelatory, ceaselessly burning.'”–Publishers Weekly

“For me, C.D. Wright’s poetry is river gold. ‘Love whatever flows.’ Her language is on the page half pulled out of earth and rivers–still holding onto the truth of the elements. I love her voice and pitch and the long snaky arms of her language that is willing to hold everything–human and angry and beautiful.”–Michael Ondaatje

“C.D. Wright is entirely her own poet, a true original.”–The Gettysburg Review

More Non-Juvenile Books

  • Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous portrait photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time.

  • Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war.

  • Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is Black, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene? Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is [...]