I was very lucky to have spoken on the phone with
Franz several times over those last few months. His voice was fading into a
nearly unintelligible rasp—but I managed to cling my ear to his every word—as
he unloaded strange, pharmaceutically-enhanced confessions for me, and we
reminisced about the old days in the mid-80s when we used to tear Kenmore
Square and the Allston/Brighton metropolitan Boston area apart on our nocturnal
excursions. Strolling together down Marlborough Street over the rolling waves
of red bricked sidewalks amid the twilit dusk of gas lamps, I'll never forget
when Franz would suddenly halt behind me, and I would turn to see him standing
there, face downward, with a look of extreme concentration. I'd amble back over
to him, and wait. I knew what was coming. He was about to read a poem—from
memory—one of his particular skills. Sometimes a whole series of minutes would
elapse while he stood there, silent and apparently downloading into his brain
the lines of the poem, one at a time, until he was ready to begin. During this
extended interval of expectant waiting I found it almost impossible to breathe.
The anticipation grew exponentially until he finally would break the silence
with his words. I consider myself one of the luckiest people on Earth for
having had the opportunity to hear Franz read his own poems aloud. Certain
artists in this world set a standard for their work which elevates the bar for
others to an unsurpassed threshold. Franz Wright was one of those artists.
His ability to cut through to the marrow of things remains unparalleled. His
every word breathed in the composition of his poetry shone like dark emeralds
set in the bones of the human soul. Novelist Denis Johnson famously stated that
Franz's poems "are like tiny jewels shaped by blunt, ruined
fingers—miraculous gifts." Charles Simic said that Franz's "secret
ambition is to write an epic on the inside of a matchbook cover." His
sparse poems hold hidden revelations for the patient reader. Genuine spiritual
insights bloom up out of the black ink welling from his brain, which I imagine somewhat
resembled a great octopus jammed into a large mason jar. The insights his words
trigger have become priceless to me. Because I knew him all too well during
that period in his life which could be said to have led him to a series of
severe psychosomatic breakdowns—including losing his job as the best
poetry professor at Emerson College—the gratefulness I feel when considering
his exemplary career after being published by Knopf (all seven of those
hardcover books remain my most treasured literary possessions)—suffice it to
say, that body of work alone serves to elevate him into the ranks of the
greatest poets that ever lived, in my opinion (not to mention the extreme body
of work before the Knopf years). I can say this much with great self-assurance: for me, there will never be another poet
whose focus so successfully transcends the human condition. Recently, those of
us who knew Franz realized he was heading toward his final days. I myself
feared last year that he may not make it to the spring, and I very much wanted
to fly to Boston for one last visit with him. Of course it's appropriate that
he held on long enough to witness once again the tiny blossoms of springtime,
to breathe in the sweet scent of flowers and be reminded one last time about
the strange, eternal recurrence of the natural world and its impossible human
emissaries. In my mind this morning, just a couple of days after his private
green burial near the town of Waltham, Mass where he last dwelled with his wife,
Franz Wright's poetic accomplishment staggers my ability to take it all in; but
I can readily perceive how it was that he managed to successfully transubstantiate
himself—his own flesh, bone, blood and spirit—into a living language which will
survive as long as we continue to bind and print books and for as long as human
memory will last. Now I look out at the purest sky and there is just no way I
could ever think of him as being gone. It may sound trite but I distinctly
perceive my old friend and teacher as now remaining here and everywhere,
forevermore. It is as if he has literally dispersed into the macrocosm and now
infuses every living thing with his collective presence. His tear drop has
returned to the primordial sea. The waters of paradise, after accepting him
back into their domain, have closed scarlessly once again. Now, the
infinitesimal silence captured beneath the leaves has become more apparent to
me. The dissolving light swallowed by the hedgerows as the Sun goes down every
evening reminds me that Franz's inimitable spirit still remains here and
everywhere. The bird songs I listen to outside my window early mornings now seem
to be echoing his radiant presence. I'll never look at a hawk again without
thinking of my old friend. I think there's an unspoken message behind his
entire body of work, emanating from the whole of his life itself, which says in
a private whisper barely discernible unless you strain to pick it up, "Now
that I've shown you the sacred heart of all that is to be feared and loved here
on Earth during this, your solitary lifetime, go now and allow your soul to be
filled with adoration for this existence." That's a raw
paraphrasing—Franz himself put it into crystal clear words for us. In his extreme
devotion to poetry, Franz conveyed a spirituality more lucid than any religion
dares to conjure for me. Free of the restraints of institutionalized beliefs, his poetry
strikes the brass bell of joyous perception itself. It rings true in the mind
long after the words themselves have dissipated. I’ll never get to walk by his
side through the lowering dusk again; none of us will. Yet he now walks beside
us all if we can see it in our hearts that he is literally everywhere. When the
final sigh of wind through the bristlecone pines dies down, that is when, if I
listen very closely, I will hear my friend's interminable pause before his
words whisper once again across my mind. Thank you for helping guide us to see
the light and for just being here for us all, Franz, dear old friend. We will all be reunited in the end.
