Jay Wright, an African-American poet, essayist, dramaturge, and theologian, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Academy of American Poets awarded Wright the Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement and in bestowing the award, J.D. McClatchy commented, “Jay Wright’s books have appeared like summer lightning, sudden and unexpected, brilliant in the surrounding dark.” He has written ten books of poetry and a play. Before he became a poet and studied comparative literature, he played semi-pro baseball with the San Diego Padres.
More By This Poet
Light's Interrupted Amplitude
All summer connotations fill this light,
a symmetry of different scales—the site
of fibrous silence, the velvet lace
of iris, alders the moon can ignite.
One feels the amplitude of grief, the pace
of oscillating stars, power in place
where time has crossed and left a...
The Healing Improvisation of Hair
If you undo your do you would
be strange. Hair has been on my mind.
I used to lean in the doorway
and watch my stony woman wind
the copper through the black, and play
with my understanding, show me she cóuld
take a cup of...