Ready or Not by Robin Wright

(3 customer reviews)

$14.99

 

Ready or Not takes you on a roller coaster ride of love and losses. You get the whole of life in a beloved son and the lasting attachments with family and friends who support you. You lose your uncle, a dear friend, and even your mother in the poem, Alzheimer’s, a disease that leaves her “stumbling away from what you once knew.”  In the end, Ready or Not, you are left on your own to handle life’s challenges. This chapbook offers a dizzy read about the hope and loss that makes life worth living.

–Ingrid Bruck, author of Finding Stella Maris

 

In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman states, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” The wonderful thing about figurative language is that it can be applied to a reader’s thought processes in many ways. For me, the truth of this statement lies at the heart of what makes a poem. “I am large” can be a reality that applies to very few words and “I contain multitudes” can easily be connected to the universality of specific images. A good example of what I mean is most certainly found in Robin Wright’s sparse but hauntingly beautiful poems in her new chapbook Ready or Not. In a few pages Wright explores the connections between love and loss, which have always been a vital part of the human experience, with candor and with language that is fresh, accessible, and artful. The imagery does exactly what you would expect good poetry to do. It makes us feel what we already know. In “What This Woman Wants” she writes, “I want you to want me like wind/ blowing through you…shaking you until you forget there’s anything outside the window, the room, the bed,” and you not only understand the love, you feel the passion. When she writes about observing someone close struggling with Alzheimer’s and describes “a bruised mind trying to light a fire of remembrance,” the loss perceived is terrifying. This book is a must read not only for fans of good poetry but fans of life as well.

–Jim McGarrah, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award and author of A Balancing Act

 

 

 

 

 

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Description

Ready or Not

by Robin Wright

$14.99, paper

978-1-64662-303-7

2020

Ready or Not explores life’s unexpected events through poems about relationships, love, loss, and death. It includes, “Like This,” a finalist in Poetry Matters Spring Robinson/Mahogany Red Literary Prize.

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Panoply, Black Bough Poetry, Spank the Carp, Rue Scribe, Terror House Magazine, Rune Bear, Another Way Round, Ariel Chart, Bindweed Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, and others. Two of her poems were published in the University of Southern Indiana’s 50th anniversary anthology, Time Present, Time Past. She had a poem nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Panoply.

3 reviews for Ready or Not by Robin Wright

  1. Connie Stambush (verified owner) –

    I am always searching to discover poetry that I can relate to, that takes me to deeper places, intellectually and emotionally. Robin Wright’s poetry does exactly that for me. She has a pure gift when pairing and evoking imagery and meaning that leaves readers awed as to how she did it. Her book, Ready or Not, will please poetry lovers and those who rarely read it.

  2. Meg Freer (verified owner) –

    There is not a lot of hope in these poems, but the characters cope as best they can, “ready or not”, in the face of break-ups, deaths, arguments and uncertainties and find small reasons to hope. These poems showcase the resilience of human nature, despite all the challenges at different stages of adult life. Robin Wright packs a lot of meaning into concise form, while still managing to include unique and important details and images.

  3. Mare Leonard –

    The first poem Fringe pulls us into the Midwest landscape of the 1970’s, a time and place that many readers will recognize, but if not, Wright brings it to life in a genuine and unassuming way.

    A bar scene with the lyrics of Love Shack playing in the background might lead the reader to believe this is a start of a Netflix series because the poem moves along a sensuous narrative: a sexual scene, a marriage, a baby and a breakup. You might think it all sounds so familiar, but Wright’s language and pacing is fresh and seductive. Also, her connection with nature creates surprises for a world we usually ignore and stumble through. The reader will travel with Wright whether they are ready or not.

    Wright offers a roller coaster ride into a world we know but not with the beauty of her Midwest landscape. Although she celebrates life, she does not ignore death and dying. What I love about Wright’s poetry is her ability to portray a world we seem to ignore or stumble through, showing us that whether we are ready or not, we have to endure the pain of life and the sorrow of death. The reader will be captivated by the freshness of her imagery and truth telling and the beauty, even in the world of dying.

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