Copper Canyon Press, paperback Publication Date: April 01, 2007 Publisher Marketing: "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, The New York Times Book Review "Wright has found a way to wed fragments of an iconic America to a luminously strange idiom, eerie as a tin whistle, which she uses to evoke the haunted quality of our carnal existence."--The New Yorker 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 One Big Self--originally published as a large-format limited edition that featured photographs and text--was selected by The New York Times and The Village Voice as a notable book of the year. This edition features the poem exclusively.
