A few days ago at Isola di Rifiuti, John Latta named C.D. Wright’s “Rising, Falling, Hovering” “the most ambi­tious U.S. anti-​war poem of the bloom­ing idi­otic twenty-​first century.”

Latta being Latta, that praise—and I don’t think it’s ten­den­tious to take it as such—is asserted only after he’s com­pleted his shift of crit­i­cal heavy lift­ing, here cen­tered on the con­nec­tion between the two halves of the poem. (Which, dear reader, I beg for­bear­ance to repeat were first pub­lished in Chicago Review 51:3 and 53:2/3.) Latta writes:

The move­ment between “Rising, Falling, Hov­er­ing” and “Rising, Falling, Hov­er­ing, / cont.” is one of refus­ing surcease, increased con­cern, anger unabated and rising. (Indeed, one fully expects the poem to con­tinue for­ever with purer and purer distill’d rage, dog­ging the “end­less war” sce­nario of the crim­i­nal U.S. policy-​makers.) If the “cont.” story wor­ries about a son trav­el­ing unaccompany’d in Mexico and about tend­ing to a friend’s “bad diag­no­sis” and appar­ent cancer treat­ment in Mexico City (jux­ta­posed against—on the flight down: “The mon­i­tor from the over­head / begins its info­tain­ment Not shown: white phos­pho­rous falling / on the city of minarets”), thus seem­ing to focus in, off the high civic stakes of its beginnings—too, it ends by bray­ing out a mag­nif­i­cent curse…

Latta’s review gives me occa­sion to men­tion that the forth­com­ing issue of CR, due back from the press in a few weeks, includes C.D. Wright’s own take on the poem, an auto­com­men­tary some­what along the lines of the expli­ca­tion de soi-même that John Matthias under­took for CR 52:2/3/4.

I’m get­ting to this a little late, but The New Yorker ran a “Briefly Noted” item on C.D. Wright’s new Rising, Falling, Hov­er­ing. About the book’s “stunning” title poem, which first appeared in Chicago Review, the unsigned reviewer has this to say:

Wright weaves the strands of var­i­ous narratives—a trip to Mexico, a friend’s recent ill­ness, the speaker’s con­flicts with her college-​age son, her grief over the news from Iraq—into a pro­found med­i­ta­tion on our long­ing for common expe­ri­ences. The benumbed activ­i­ties of the day (“I have been to Pilates I found my old coat”) are inter­rupted by reports of the war’s mount­ing casu­al­ties: “As of three hours ago / 2,311 of our mem­bers are to remain For­ever Young.”

The first part of the poem—available as a PDF here—appeared in Chicago Review 51:3; the second part appeared in CR 53:2/3, our most recent issue. Both issues are still avail­able for sale.

Chicago Review’s Autumn issue (53:2/3) is back from the press and avail­able now for only twelve dol­lars. Buy a copy today!

POETRY in the issue includes Book V of Ronald Johnson’s Radi os (enti­tled “The Book of Adam”); “Rising, Falling, Hovering,” the second half of CD Wright’s long poem about the Iraq war (the first half of which was pub­lished in CR 51:3); and poems by Larissa Szpor­luk, William Fuller, Sarah Gri­d­ley, Roberto Har­ri­son, Mark Tardi, John Peck, Erín Moure, Oana Avasili­chioaei, and Elisa Sampedrin.

FIC­TION includes five short sto­ries by Peter Markus and Jede­diah Berry’s “Minus, His Heart.”

CRIT­I­CISM in the issue includes a defense of real­ism by Georges Perec and a long con­sid­er­a­tion of Hart Crane by Allen Grossman.

The issue also includes a three-​part con­ver­sa­tion on gender in con­tem­po­rary poetry, with an essay by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young, a response by Jen­nifer Ashton, and a note by Joshua Kotin and Robert P. Baird.

REVIEWS in the issue include:

The autumn 2007 issue of Chicago Review is at press and avail­able to pre-​order.

(The issue will be mailed in early October.)

The issue fea­tures: the second half of “Rising, Hov­er­ing, Falling,” C.D. Wright’s long poem about the Iraq war; Book V of Ronald Johnson’s Radi os; an arti­cle on fem­i­nism and inno­v­a­tive poetry by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young, and a response from Jen­nifer Ashton; essays by Georges Perec (on real­ism) and Allen Gross­man (on Hart Crane). Plus the next install­ment of Kent Johnson’s twelve-​part crit­i­cal novella, a review of J.H. Prynne’s “To Pollen.” And much much much more.

The full table of con­tents is posted as a pdf on CR’s web­site and is sum­ma­rized below.

Pre-​order the issue now!