• 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for Walking to Martha's Vineyard
• Whiting Fellowship
• National Endowment for the Arts grant
• PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry
• 1989 Guggenheim Fellowship

They're like tiny jewels shaped by blunt, ruined fingers--miraculous gifts.

among the most honest, haunting, and human being written today.

Wright oscillates between direct and evasive dictions, between the barroom floor and the arts club podium, from aphoristic aside to icily poetic abstraction. Bold Type: Essay on Franz Wright

[h]eartfelt but often cryptic poems...fans will find Wright's self-diagnostics moving throughout.

Wright promises, and can deliver, great depths of feeling,

Wright depends very much on our sense of his tone, and on our belief not just that he means what he says but that he has said something new...[on this score] Walking to Martha's Vineyard sometimes succeeds.

deader than deadpan, any particular Wright poem may not seem like much, until, that is, you read a few of them. Once the context kicks in, you may find yourself trying to track down every word he’s written

[t]his poet is surprisingly vague about the specifics of his torment (most of his poems are shouts and curses in the dark). He was cruelly affected by the divorce of his parents, though perhaps after forty years there should be a statute of limitation... 'The Only Animal,' the most accomplished poem in the book, collapses into the same kitschy sanctimoniousness that puts nodding Jesus dolls on car dashboards.

• Wheeling Motel Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, ISBN 9780307265685
• Earlier Poems, Random House, Inc., 2007, ISBN 9780307265661
• God's Silence, Knopf, 2006, ISBN 9781400043514
• Walking to Martha's Vineyard Alfred A. Knopf, 2003, ISBN 9780375415180
• The Beforelife A.A. Knopf, 2001, ISBN 9780375411540
• ILL LIT: Selected & New Poems Oberlin College Press, 1998, ISBN 9780932440839
• Rorschach test, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1995, ISBN 9780887482090
• The Night World and the Word Night Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1993, ISBN 9780887481543
• Entry in an Unknown Hand Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1989, ISBN 9780887480782
• Going North in Winter Gray House Press, 1986
• The One Whose Eyes Open When You Close Your Eyes Pym-Randall Press, 1982, ISBN 9780913219355
• 8 Poems (1982)
• The Earth Without You Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1980, ISBN 9780914946236
• Tapping the White Cane of Solitude (1976)

Anthologies

• "Passing Scenes (While Reading Basho)", The Best American Poetry 2008, Editors Charles Wright, David Lehman, Simon and Schuster, 2008, ISBN 9780743299749
• "Language as Sacrament in the New Testament", Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of Image, Editor Gregory Wolfe, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2009, ISBN 9780802864642

Translations

• The unknown Rilke: selected poems, Rainer Maria Rilke, Translator Franz Wright, Oberlin College Press, 1990, ISBN 9780932440563
• Valzhyna Mort: Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) (translated from the Belarusian language in collaboration with the author and Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright)