The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All

Wright’s 15th book and second collection of prose poetry/lyric essays (after 2005’s Cooling Time) further reveals her particular Southern wit, engagement with art, and commitment to social justice. Four major recurring themes unite the collection: Wright’s various journeys at home and abroad, her lifelong engagement with her contemporaries (including Brenda Hillman and Forrest Gander), her constant search for and redefining of poetry itself, and her love for Robert Creeley and William Carlos Williams. Wright deftly interweaves her wide-ranging pursuits into something remarkably cohesive, demonstrating a willingness to tackle any subject and bring it into the fold. “As with most scientific papers, silence may be all that is at the other end,” she writes of poetry. “Maybe silence itself has a value beyond being humbling. Maybe the record being made is its primary worth, and the rest of our temporal span is meant just for living and the attention it commands.” In one of many passages dedicated to Williams’s Spring & All, she writes, “his apostrophe was to the future, but he hankered for contact here and now. The charge of his writing was change.” The same could be said about Wright. (Jan.)