Dark Orchard

Winner of the 2005 Texas Review Breakthrough Poetry Prize

"In a world that is nearly awash in first books, William Wright's Dark Orchard stands out for its lyrical obsession with the heritage a son may have from parents and from the deeply felt landscape of childhood. . . . The language is filled with a kind of desolation and a beauty that is not quite despair, something that is better known, one suspects, by the young than by the rest of us. We should be grateful for this chance to rediscover its reach."-Phebe Davidson

"William Wright's poems welcome us into a rich and enchanting universe. Planted in the fecund soil of his native South Carolina, this book's vision is simultaneously delicate and dangerous, touching and alarming. Woven throughout with the subtle undertones of his poetic forebears (one sees Theodore Roethke, Robert Penn Warren, and James Wright dancing in the shadows), Dark Orchard is an impressive debut volume with a depth of insight that belies the author's youth, a collection that leaves me thirsting for the next book."-Stephen Gardner