The Small Books of Bach

The Small Books of Bach is an offering of forty poems, each a spiritual query, playful celebration, or serious riff on the music and life of J. S. Bach. Divided into four books, the poems range from lyrical investigations into Bach's life to surprising, irreverent meditations on performances of the composer's work. While Bach lovers will enjoy the references to his music and its reception, these energetic poems can draw all readers into the composer's surprising life and spiritually challenging music, a body of work with the potential to make readers ""want to dance or get right with a much better God / than they came with, or the one they had planned to take home.""

""David Wright has apprenticed himself to the greatest of masters--with the humility of the student alert to the astonishments of point and counterpoint, our aesthetic antipodes. Were you worried, you may be at peace. Here, in these beautiful poems, in the poet's haunted hands, Bach springs eternal.""
--Alan Michael Parker, author of Love Song with Motor Vehicles

""From a 'singed g-minor' in wartime to a 'Sestina for Bach's Mama,' Wright's Bach is an imaginative creation suited to the revival tent and electric organ, feeling all along the 'hum and rhythm' present in the syncopated experiences of art and belief.""
--Brett Foster, author of The Garbage Eater

""Here's the deal with this book: it's funnier than you think it is. And it's sadder than it presents. And it's far, far wiser than it sets out to be . . . Here is a book of private absolutions made public, settled 'scores' (there's that Wrightian wryness again), and ultimately, an elegiac lyric congregated around loss and God. Don't be fooled--this isn't a book about Bach. It's a book about the common crisis shared by every living, loving soul. It's a book that sings longing's awful song.""
--Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of Heaven


David Wright lives in Central Illinois and teaches creative writing and American literature at Monmouth College. He is the author of A Liturgy for Stones (2003). His poems have appeared in Image, Ecotone, Hobart, Books & Culture, and many other publications.