Selected Plays of Jay Wright, Volume Three: Glimmerings and Constellations (Creative and Critical Responses)

The lauded poet Jay Wright is known for weaving global cosmologies into taut, rhythmically dynamic verses that double as poetic and philosophical treatises. Having recently published two volumes of his selected plays, composed over several decades, in this volume, nine leading voices in contemporary US poetry, performance making, and performance theory, offer insights into Wright’s theatre. Intended for scholars and theatre-makers alike, these contributions act as points of entry into Wright’s theatre-thinking and add to the growing discourse around Wright’s work that sees in this artistic figure one of America’s most exciting intellects. The creative and critical responses to Wright’s work include essays and other texts by Will Daddario, Matthew Goulish, Devin King, David Grubbs, Michael Paul Berlin, Esteban Rodríguez, Sebastián Calderón Bentin, Daniel Woody, and Duriel E. Harris.

Jay Wright was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1934 and currently lives in Vermont. Wright was a professional baseball player, a member of the U.S. Army medical corps, a jazz bassist, and has been a visiting professor of literature at many universities. Active during the Black Arts Movement and the New American Poetry, his first poetry collection was published in 1967 and he has since published over fifteen books of poetry—including Thirteen Quintets for Lois (2021), Music’s Mask and Measure (2007), The Guide Signs: Book One and Book Two (2007), Transfigurations: Collected Poems (2000), Elaine’s Book (1988), The Double Invention of Komo (1980), and The Homecoming Singer (1971). He is also the author of more than forty plays and a dozen essays. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Wright’s honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, a Joseph Compton Creative Writing Fellowship (Dundee University), the Hodder Fellowship (Princeton University), and The American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.