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Franz Wright Raised Up

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certain jobs?

They are absolutely shameless at the bank --

you'd think my name meant nothing to them. Non-

chalantly they hand me the sum I've requested . . .

It's partially the bleakness of Wright's early work that makes his conversion to Catholicism so moving. "Year One," in his Pulitzer-winning collection Walking to Martha's Vineyard, ends with this sparely carved testament of his new faith: "Proof/of Your existence? There is nothing/but."

For most of my life, I was an atheist who found a eucharistic connection to others only through poetry. Reading a poem aloud, I took another person's passion into my body and was transformed by it. This Easter, regardless of your faith or its lack, I wish you the communion that Wright's "The First Supper" promises. It addresses God, but the poem could be spoken to poetry itself:

Death, heaven, bread, breath and the sea

Here

to scare me

But I too will be fed by

the other food

that I know nothing

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