Tom Lynch

The Austrian poet Franz Wright, who now calls Massachusetts home, visits Chicago this week for a reading and a workshop, thanks to The Poetry Center's continuous efforts to bring high-profile poets to the Midwest. Wright's 2003 collection "Walking to Martha's Vineyard" beat out stiff competition for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, while his other books, such as "The Beforelife" and "Ill Lit: Selected & New Poems," are equally as engrossing and memorable. The poet, who also spends his days working for a mental-health center for children and teenagers, can pull off short, studded stanzas like no other contemporary--single lines that tell complete histories of time and the backwater of long lives. He can be funny or he can be inquisitive and sorrowful, but either way, Wright's always worth a read and deserves attention. Plus, a broadside of one of Wright's poems, joined by an image created by Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick, rests on display.

Franz Wright reads from his collection of work on November 30 at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Ballroom, 112 South Michigan, (312)899-1229, at 6:30pm. $10.

(2004-11-22)

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