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Against the Encroaching Grays
Book •
C.
D. Wright's 'Against the Encroaching Grays' is a reflective lyric that meditates on aging, memory, and the quotidian moments that accumulate into a life.
The poem moves between intimate requests—to be forgiven and loved—and a catalogue of small, everyday images: a grasshopper femur, a farmer's market, flyers for a lost dog.
Wright's idiosyncratic syntax and spare punctuation create a voice that sits between speech and song, rendering simultaneous past and present.
The poem also gestures toward the act of poetry itself, ending with the striking image of a 'dark clot of poetry' breaking off, suggesting renewal and the bodily origins of language.
Published posthumously in The New Yorker, it offers a poignant late utterance from a singular American poet.
D. Wright's 'Against the Encroaching Grays' is a reflective lyric that meditates on aging, memory, and the quotidian moments that accumulate into a life.
The poem moves between intimate requests—to be forgiven and loved—and a catalogue of small, everyday images: a grasshopper femur, a farmer's market, flyers for a lost dog.
Wright's idiosyncratic syntax and spare punctuation create a voice that sits between speech and song, rendering simultaneous past and present.
The poem also gestures toward the act of poetry itself, ending with the striking image of a 'dark clot of poetry' breaking off, suggesting renewal and the bodily origins of language.
Published posthumously in The New Yorker, it offers a poignant late utterance from a singular American poet.
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Adrian Matejka
Adrian Matejka Reads C.D. Wright
