Charles Wright (1) (1935–)

Why isn't Charles Wright's name on the lips of everyone who cares about language and being and the world? His poetry embodies immanence. It's a perpetual challenge, and I welcome its demands and delights.

Desire discriminates and language discriminates:
They form no part of the essence of things:
each word
Is a failure, each object
We name and place
leads us another step away from the light.

Loss is its own gain.
Its secret is emptiness.
Our images lie in the flat pools of their dark selves
Like bodies of water the tide moves.
They move as the tide moves.
Its secret is emptiness.

A great collection of work by an underrated poet. In Wright's poetry, Paul Celan, Du Fu, and Dante meet and discuss the show more Appalachians. This kaleidoscopic conversation is nowhere more evident than the selections from Chickamauga—which, for me, are the strongest. show less

To me, these poems read like salt water. Some are nightswimming in the briny, dark, endless Atlantic, fathoms unknown beneath my treading feet. Others the taste of tears on my lips, breeze a delicate finger against the glaze of water on my cheeks. And a handful are the salty-sweet strangeness of salt water taffy. All lovely, all words worth savoring a spell.

Fairly unexciting collection. Nothing particularly objectionable, but few poems that really ride their own melting, as Frost would have them do. Which is disappointing, as I really love Charles Wright's poetry (wonderful introduction, though). Favourites: 'Threshing' (Louise Glück), 'The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus by Castor and Pollux' (Richard Howard), 'Of Love and Other Disasters' (Philip Levine), 'Hexagon: On Truth' (Dave Snyder), 'Language exists because...' (Lynn Xu), 'Book of show more Hours' (Kevin Young). show less