You ever wondered about those strange maps at the entrance to Special Collections? There is the cool wood engraving showing Arkansas in reverse alongside a print made from it, “The Reader’s Map of Arkansas,” showing the state’s notable literary locations (real and imagined). Perhaps you never noticed it before, but next time you visit Special Collections please take a look. That map was created as part of the Lost Roads Project by the renowned poet and scholar C.D. Wright who passed away Tuesday, January 12, 2016.
Engraving and printed map from the Lost Roads project created by C.D. Wright in 1994, currently displayed at the entrance to Special Collections.
Works by C.D. Wright included in the Arkansas Collection in the University Libraries’ Special Collections. Clockwise from the top left are: Room Rented by a Single Woman (1977); Translations of the Gospel Back into Tongues (1982); A Farm Boy (2010); Just Whistle (1993, photos by Deborah Luster).
The map is just one of several works by Wright in the University Libraries’ collections, along with 11 published books of poetry and scholarship, her Master’s Thesis (MFA from the UofA, 1976) and manuscript prints in Special Collections created through the Lost Roads Project: A Walk-In Book of Arkansas (MC1391). That collection includes letterpress broadsides that were exhibited with accompanying photographs by Deborah Luster across the state during the 1990s. “Lost Roads” was also the name of the poetry press Wright founded with Frank Stanford in Fayetteville in 1977. Wright and the Lost Roads Press relocated to San Francisco a few years later.
Born in Mountain Home, Arkansas, in 1949, Wright achieved national and international acclaim during her career. She received many awards and honors including a MacArthur Grant and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She served on the faculty at Brown University from 1983 until her death.
For a moving reflection on Wright, her career, and enduring impact on American literature, sees the “postscript” tribute to her by Ben Lerner in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/postscript-c-d-wright-1949-2016. NPR has also published a celebration of Wright by Craig Morgan Teicher. You can also see the profile of Wright provided by the Poetry Foundation for more information, or visit her entry in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.