One Big Self
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“Wright has found a way to wed fragments of an iconic America to a luminously strange idiom, eerie as a tin whistle, which she uses to evoke the haunted quality of our carnal existence.”—The New Yorker
Inspired by numerous visits inside Louisiana state prisons—where MacArthur Fellow C.D. Wright served as a “factotum” for a portrait photographer—One Big Self bears witness to incarcerated men and women and speaks to the psychic toll of protracted time passed in constricted space. It is a riveting mosaic of distinct voices, epistolary pieces, elements from a moralistic board game, road signage, prison data, inmate correspondence, and “counts” of things—from baby’s teeth to chigger bites:
Count your folding money
Count the times you said you wouldn’t go back
Count your debts
Count the roaches when the light comes on
Count your kids after the housefire
One Big Self—originally published as a large-format limited edition that featured photographs and text—was selected by The New York Times and The Village Voice as a notable book of the year. This edition features the poem exclusively.
C.D. Wright is the author of ten books of poetry, including several collaborations with photographer Deborah Luster. She is a professor at Brown University.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally released in 2003 as an expensive, limited-edition art book featuring photographs by Deborah Luster, Wright's poetic book-length meditation and report on life in three Louisiana prisons is now widely available for the first time. To portray the lives of those she met when she and Luster visited these prisons, Wright's method is accretion, her form the list. Registering a bevy of voices, from the poem's own twangy consciousness ("The redhead here is a photographer and I'm her humble factotum") to prisoners' hopeless missives, Wright (Steal Away) attempts to report what she sees, like a journalist telling it slant. She includes stock-takings of things brought in from outside ("Count your blessings// Count your stars (lucky or not)// Count your loose change"), haunting prison factoids ("Tennessee's retired chair available on eBay"), possible quotes from prisoners ("I've always had the willies") and poetic advice ("Remember the almighty finger on the wrong-answer button"). Piled one atop another, these verbal shards create a harrowing vamp that is as much a compassionate portrayal of prison life as it is about the fragmentary way anyone comes to know anyone else. Wright gets better with each book, expanding the reach of her art; it seems it could take in anything.
