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Franz Wright | Prizewinning poet, 62

Franz Wright, 62, who wrote with raw lyricism about inner demons, death, God, and redemption, died of lung cancer last Thursday at his home in Waltham, Mass.

Franz Wright, 62, who wrote with raw lyricism about inner demons, death, God, and redemption, died of lung cancer last Thursday at his home in Waltham, Mass.

Mr. Wright was 15 and living in California when he sent some poems to a tough critic - his father.

"I'll be damned," the acclaimed poet James Wright wrote back. "You're a poet. Welcome to hell."

The words were knowing - and prophetic. His son would share his afflictions - decades darkened by mental illness and addiction - as well as a gift for transforming personal pain into Pulitzer Prize-winning work.

The Wrights are believed to be the only father and son to have each won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The elder Wright won his in 1972, and his son followed three decades later for the 2003 collection Walking to Martha's Vineyard.

The senior Wright was a strong presence in his son's poems. He was an absent father after he divorced Franz's mother, and the son felt his abandonment keenly. "Since you left me at eight I have always been lonely," he wrote in "Flight."

The younger Mr. Wright grew up among famous poets. His father's friends included Theodore Roethke, John Berryman, and Anne Sexton. "I thought they were all nuts," Mr. Wright said.

He battled depression from an early age. In 1999, in his mid-40s, he converted to Catholicism, and his spiritual awakening opened a floodgate.

"I would go to Mass and I would no sooner sit down than entire poems would appear full-blown," he said. - L.A. Times