Rising, Falling, Hovering: A Poetry of Ethics and Responsibility by C.D. Wright

Review by Shannon K. Winston

For many reasons, C.D. Wright’s newest collection of poetry, Rising, Falling, Hovering, is breathtaking. Stylistically, Wright’s poems are delicate, deceptively simple, and replete with striking imagery. For example, she opens “Like Having a Light at the Back You Can’t See but You Can Still Feel (1)” with the following lines: “As if it were streaming into your ear./ The edges of the room long vanished” (4). One of the greatest strengths of this collection is its refreshing variation. Wright is vigorous and attentive to all of her lines and each poem begins differently than the one that preceded it. The lines are double space which adds an airy quality to the poems that allows readers to slow down and contemplate each line without rushing. In the same poem, the speaker writes of two people: “they were not covering the air/with false words” (Ibid), which is true of Wright herself. Rising, Falling, Hovering is a very raw collection that abandons ornate language in favor of a vigorous questioning of what it means to be a poet in today’s world.

Related to the last point, one of the most important and compelling themes that reoccurs in Rising, Falling, Hovering is the question of responsibility towards others when the world is ravaged by war and injustice. Wright opens her collection with the following citation from Maurice Merleau-Ponty that sets the tone for the entire collection: “The momentum of existence towards others, towards the future, towards the world can be restored as a river unfreezes.” The reader can interpret each line in this collection, therefore, as Wright’s deeply personal and politically attempt to communicate and do right to others. Each line is a gesture towards a better, more equal future. While certainly utopic, Rising, Falling, Hovering also ponders whether a poet can foment significant change. Wright writes: “But we can’t leave it to the forces to rub out the color of the world/ What is said has been said before (space)/ This is no time for poetry” (15). But, if anything, Wright’s collection seems to confirm that poets have an ethical responsibility to write, to question their world and their place in it. In this hauntingly beautiful collection, Wright presents some of the most salient questions—what it means to be human, to live with others, and to experience both beauty and violence—in an artfully crafted and delicate verse. For all of these reasons, Rising, Falling, Hovering is not only a stunning read but an important one as well.