One with Others

While a poet's singular perspective is often a factor in the understanding and analysis of her work, in C. D. Wright's latest book, One with Others, that critical point of entry is broadened by a torrent of voices, sources of information, and conflicting beliefs. Wright begins with V., her friend and mentor, dying alone in her Hell's Kitchen apartment. In fragments, V., a white woman, recounts her involvement in a civil rights action in her hometown in Arkansas, organized by Sweet Willie Wine, a black man, to protest the assassination of Martin Luther King. Mixing reportage with poetry and quotes culled from personally conducted interviews, Wright builds a multi-dimensional work that ranges between the past and the present and rings with the voices of racism's victims: families chased into hiding, lives stunted or crushed by socially sanctioned violence. Wright also captures racism's perpetrators: the sheriffs and ministers, the shop owners and neighbors—the people who strove to make Jim Crow seem like the natural order of things and who resorted to violence to prove their point. The ambitious approach and scope of One with Others results in a complex mosaic of cruelty and unredeemed hurt; however, Wright's focus can feel too splintered at times, diffusing some of the poem's emotional impact. Nevertheless, this is a powerful book and a solid addition to Wright's important body of work.

Critical Questions for C.D. Wright (from our 3/2011 newsletter)

CM: Is there an American poetic tradition that you feel you belong to?

CDW: I think I am simply in the American grain; that my geographical moves have distributed my literary heritage.

You were born in the Arkansas Ozarks but have lived in the northeast US for years. Do you identify yourself as a Southern Writer?

It doesn't seem like a useful designation. I think I am not from a generation that holds to such a claim with real conviction. At this point the regional adjective seems like a worn-out marketing tool. This doesn't mean I renounce the rushing green rivers, the stubborn rocks, the hardwood trees, or whatever is left of my accent - much less my upbringing.

Your work often incorporates an array of literary styles that aren't traditionally "poetic." What attracts you to these other sources?

There are so many choices that enter into making a poem, so many ways to make poetry. I have availed myself of the strategies that suit my temperament, my material, and my homemade set of skills.

Do you view your work as a form of activism?

More as a call for reflection. It may occasionally obtain to an imaginative form of instigation.

What was the seed for One with Others?

It was meant as a paean to a friend. It also entailed a fairly critical consideration of a given place in a particular time.

One with Others is, in part, composed of interviews with people affected by both Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement. Were people hesitant to talk with you about any of this?

Some people were wary; some were too tired or too busy, and others were very interested in recounting a critical moment in their lives at a forty-year remove.

The bibliography for One with Others includes It Came From Memphis by Robert Gordon, a book about the music scene there. Was music a resource for you in writing One with Others?

I wish I had used it as more of a resource, but I did tap into the sound here and there.

Photography is a major component in your work. How does it affect your writing process?

I like to look, and I like to try to understand what I think I am seeing. The pictures take me to a thoughtful space. Writing is my primary path toward understanding.

Deborah Luster, a photographer you've collaborated with before, provided the cover image of the pump house on your current book One with Others. Can you explain the significance of this image?

It was the pump house for the swimming pool that was filled in and turned into a parking lot. The city fathers failed to tear down the pump house; so it stands as a spectral reminder of the buried pool and all that it stood for. It is meant as an oblique emblem since it is not identified except in the fine print on the acknowledgement page.

What would you hope for someone to take away from One with Others?

The necessity for poetry.