One Big Self

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Author: C. D. Wright Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (2007) 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 moneyCount the times you said you wouldn't go backCount your debtsCount the roaches when the light comes onCount your kids after the housefire "For a long while now, C. D. Wright has been writing some of the greatest poetry-cum-prose you can find in American literature. One Big Self does to the contemporary prison-industrial complex what James Agee did to poverty—it reacts passionately and lyrically (and idiosyncratically) to a sociopolitical abomination. This book, while angry and sorrowful and bewildered, has humor, constant levity and candor, and countless moments of incredible beauty." –Dave Eggers Show more