Sign-In
Cart
Taking Flight: An Autobiography in Poetry and Poetic Prose
Paperback
Publisher Price: $16.95
ISBN13: 9780978755478
Publisher: Hollywood Jesus
Published: Mar 24 2018
Pages: 136
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.32 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
With just a handful of exceptions, the poetry of my late wife, Jennifer Cram Wright, has heretofore been unpublished. During her undergraduate years at Seattle Pacific University, a handful of her more formal pieces were published in the 1997 edition of Second Essence, the school's annual journal of the arts; but aside from that honor, and the occasional feedback she would receive on her blog from Mark Sommers and a dozen or so others, I remained Jenn's sole enthusiastic audience.
That, I predict, will change with the publication of this volume.
As I posted bits of our story on social media in the weeks preceding and following Jenn's passing at age 45, a great many people told me that I should write a book about Jenn's life; I have steadfastly declined. The best explanation is that Jenn's story is best told through her own words; and her own best words are those found in her poems and poetic prose.
Unlike in the work of many poets, what you will find here is Jenn herself. She adopts no personae or pretense, and the point of view is strictly her own. The feelings expressed are real, neither feigned nor imagined. Nor sanitized--Reader be warned.
The Bible is a gritty book, says Steven James. Very raw. Very real. It deals with people just like us, just as needy and screwed up as we are, encountering a God who would rather die than spend eternity without them.
This is the Bible that Jenn read--the Bible of Judges and Lamentations, of David's manic-depressive Psalms and Solomon's erotic Song. And Jenn loved what Mr. James articulated because she saw in God's Word what she found in her own life.
This may be the Jenn you never knew, but only heard stories about. You may not be accustomed to such grit, to such raw, confessional emotion. On the other hand, you may have served in the trenches with her during some of these years, and also know only too well of what she wrote.
In these poems, which Jenn penned between the ages of twelve and forty-three, you will find a troubling yet compelling and ultimately triumphant story of a human soul profoundly broken, longing desperately for healing and understanding, and in a glorious turn of grace finding Hope rewarded. In these poems you will find, frankly, the full Gospel: sin and depravity, the darkness of the soul, loneliness, the need for a savior, delivery from the tomb, and walking in new life. Jenn's is a distinctly Christian journey.
And in the end, I think you will see that Jenn finally felt understood--and understood herself, with great moral clarity.
God is always the hero, Jenn wrote in her journal on May 24, 2015, of victorious stories. This is her own best epitaph.
Find, then, in the mostly chronological presentation of these poems, the Hero ever-present in Jenn's story--even during her long walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And carry in your mind a vision of the Shepherd who found his precious lamb, and in whose loving and gentle arms Jenn now rests.
Greg Wright
Des Moines, Washington
January 29, 2018
Also in
Artists
Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography: The Cartoonist Who Turned the News Into Art
Kendall, Joshua
Hardcover
Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World
Johnson, Victoria
Hardcover
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
McKissack Daniel, Cheryl
Hardcover
The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Iconic Films
Rapold, Nicolas
Hardcover
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
Egan, Timothy
Paperback
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece the Sun Also Rises
Blume, Lesley M. M.
Paperback
Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It
Kurtz, Glenn
Hardcover
The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini, and the Rivalry That Transformed Rome
Morrissey, Jake
Paperback
Autopsy of My Former Self: A journey through grief, transformation, addiction, personal triumph, and purpose
Burse, Jermaine Danté
Paperback
Impossible: The Love Affair Between Marcel Duchamp and Maria Martins, and the Artwork It Inspired
Naumann, Francis M.
Hardcover
Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination
Jones, Brian Jay
Paperback
Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles
Rozzo, Mark
Paperback
Modigliani: Man and Myth - Biography and Works of Italian Painter and Sculptor Amedeo Modigliani
Modigliani, Jeanne
Paperback
Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan: Personal Histories of Two Icons of American Architecture
Thoreson, Trygve
Paperback
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin
Weschler, Lawrence
Paperback
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol [50th Anniversary Edition]: From A to B and Back Again
Warhol, Andy
Paperback
William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love: Art, Poetry, and the Imagining of a New World
Hoare, Philip
Hardcover
Composing Olana: A Journey on Foot Through Frederic Church's Greatest Work of Art
LaFarge, Annik
Paperback
Utterly Lazy and Inattentive: Martin Parr: My Words, My Photographs
Jones, Wendy
Parr, Martin
Hardcover
Warhol's Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine
Leamer, Laurence
Hardcover
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 1: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island
Monkman, Kent
Gordon, Gisele
Paperback
Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal: The Life and Times of a Female Impersonator
Roy, Sandip
Hardcover
Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life
Griest, Stephanie Elizondo
Hardcover
Footnote to History: From Hungary to America. The Memoir of a Holocaust Survivor
Laszlo, Andrew
Paperback
The Artist and His Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Public Museum in the United States
Webber, Diane
Paperback