I loved Franz Wright

I loved Franz Wright

He didn't always make that easy. While our particular friendship never descended into quarrel and abuse, other friends, mutual friends, were treated unjustly to his huge spells of anger; my sympathy for them often retarded my admiration for him.

One knew that mental illness and addiction released that anger, fueled lifelong by a hugely unhappy childhood, and one also knew that for every bridge he burned Franz eventually built a new one, often repairing friendships that had seemed irremediably damaged.

When he arrived at Oberlin, a shy and tentative undergraduate, it didn't take long to realize that he was nourishing and rapidly developing an immense poetic talent. I did what I could to give it room and encouragement, but I was scarcely alone. Oberlin was full of poets, students and faculty, to whom he could and did turn, people who could interact with his passion and growth.

Over the years there has been a remarkable consistency, of style and insight. Here is early Wright, still an undergraduate:

In a hospital roomI have to turn my facefrom the bright needle;I see it, nevertheless,

and I see the blood

and I see the test tubein which my nurse carries itobliviously, like the candlein a sleepwalker's hand.        "Blood"

Clarity of language, natural phrasing supported by natural lineation, a voice that sounds spellbound and casual at the same time: these characteristics and values would never be abandoned. Here is the same voice, late, from his 2013 collection, F:

Do youremember me?In the night's windowless darknesswhen I am lying cold and numband no one's fiddling with the lock, orshining flashlights in my eyes,although I never write, deep downI long to die with you,does that count?        "Dedication"

That so many readers have now found, and come to treasure, these remarkable poems is ample testimony to this poet's skill and dedication.

One anecdote will help illustrate our friendship, which was marked always by his generosity and our mutual affection. At one point Franz experimented with finishing his undergraduate education elsewhere, and transferred, in the mid-seventies, to another school. It didn't suit him, so he came back to finish here, and even stayed on a few years after graduating. I had not pressed him to stay or come back, but I was pleased by his return, and I wrote a little poem. In it I treated him as a revenant, noting the reputation he already had for a kind of gothic sensibility, more lugubrious than not, even delighting in the macabre. As though he was a kind of Poe:

One Who Came Back

I can't be surewhy we should want you among us

you with your bruised clothesyour fingers thickened by pity

terror's night watchman, mopping bloodwhere the books lie stitched with quiet

who stood in the grass near the gravesstriking the match of darkness

but I know we seem to need youthe way we do bread or warmth

so I'm out here in the moonlightpounding nails in your footprints

as if that could make you stay.        From The Names of a Hare in English (1979)

He took the joking in good part. Too few of the recent obituaries have taken notice of Franz's sense of humor, the wit that kept him balanced, short-circuiting the self-pity and teasing the reader about the improprieties that are so often brought to the act of reading.

I loved Franz Wright. His death was expected, even overdue, and his long illness was marked by an extraordinary productivity. Late in life, much reformed and strangely happy, though still remarkably ornery at times, he crafted a good death for himself.

So why am I so devastated? Another friend gave me the answer: you were like a father figure to him. That means you've lost a son.

Yes, that's what it feels like.