Quotes from C. D. Wright

Readers have to be sought out and won to the light of the page, poem by poem, one by one by one.

The Ozarks are a fixture in my mindscape, but I didn't stay local in every respect. I always think of Miles Davis, People who don't change end up like folk musicians playing in museums, local as a motherfucker. I wouldn't describe my attachment to home as ghostly, but long-distanced. My ear has been licked by many other tongues.

We come from a country that has made a fetish if not a virtue out of proving it can live without art: high, low, old, new, fat, lean, and particularly the rarely visible nocturnal art of poetry. We must do something with our time on this small aleatory sphere for motives other than money. Power is not an acceptable surrogate.