Black Zodiac: Poems

I'm a avid follower of Charles Wright, and I enjoyed this book of his poetry.

Very dark poetry

I am new to Wright's work, but in very little time, I felt like an old familiar. Critics will call his subject matter what they will--Wright's characteristic "issues," "concerns," obsessions," "interests," "passions"--and will either praise or damn him for working/reworking/rerereworking related materials. I found many powerful images powerfully rendered, and instances of beautiful writing. Wright is, moreover, a fine aphorist and a cunning dialectician--"What we refuse defines us"--who will appeal to those who toiled to master those difficult authors. That said, overall, Black Zodiac in my estimation falls well short of meriting the almost universal acclaim accorded by the professional poetry fraternity/sorority (it is wholly unoriginal of me to observe that this is a customary rewark bestowed on the work of long persevering colleagues). Wright gives us entirely too much on his personal sacrifice: the impossibility of poetry, the indescribability of a nature and landscapes that surpass our small rhetorical ability to encompass, the hackneyed insistence that "a line of poetry's a line of blood" (Yes, YES! Fight on, regardless of the toll one's fragile psyche must endure), on custodianship of The Word, on the meaninglessness of it all, despite...and still. Come on. I'd like to read more of Charles Wright's work, and will--if only to try to get to the place where Helen Vendler, Harold Bloom, and others of his admirers view him--and I expect to encounter his "characteristic subject matter": landscapes, clouds, ash (and lots of it), -wash, Chinoiserie, light/dark juxtapositions, recollection and loss, and ruminations on meaninglessness and mortality that come knee-high to Philip Larkin's second best writing. But I also expect a payoff in beautifully sculpted phrases and a few aphoristic nuggets.

These are the themes that I see in Wright's work: seasons, a journey, memory, "God", landscape, the power of language, the power of silence, the politics of place and time and particularly, the process/effects of grief, in many senses. "Black Zodiac" continues Wright's relationship to the play among time, place, and seasons. In this book of poems, I think there is an increasing sense of the interplay of memory and "aging." Wright's poems offer a look into solitary, yet common, moments when we speak the "truth" to ourselves....for example he asks, "What are the determining moments of our lives?/How do we know them?/ Are they ends of things or beginnings?" Another key, and pressing, theme to this book is Wright's struggle over agency-- do you give yourself over to "nature", to the "landscape", or try to negotiate the always-human tendency to control life's outcomes? Is this even a choice? He says, "To someone starting out on a long journey...take it easy..../Relax, let's what's taking take you..." This is an important and powerful collection of poetry...from a brilliant poet with a deep, and critical, understanding of language.

Considering the many excellent poetry books that were published in 1997, why did Charles Wright's Black Zodiac, which is not very good, win the most prestigious poetry award, the Pulitzer Prize? It probably has something to do with POLITICS viz. Jorie Graham told Helen Vendler to select Black Zodiac and soon after Wright -- naturally, Mark Strand.Although I don't think that Black Zodiac deserves the Pulitzer, I do think that Mr. Wright should have won the Pulitzer for China Trace, The Southern Cross and The Other Side of the River. The Other Side of the River and selections from Zone Journals were Mr. Wright's best books. After Zone Journals, Mr. Wright began to depend on skill, technique and repetition as a means of `crafting' his poems. In his earlier work, it seems as though his poems were spontaneously inspired and that they came together in entire stanzas or full sequences in which very little revision was applied, save for touch-up considerations. In the Paris Review Interview, Mr. Wright explained that he now counts every syllable and that he works on one line at a time. Unfortunately, it shows.Here is an example of Mr. Wright's earlier work. These lines are taken from The Other Side of the River:...What is it about a known landscape/that tends to undo us,/That shuffles and picks us out/For terminal demarcation, the way a field of lupine/Seen in profusion deep in the timber/Suddenly seems to rise like a lavender ground fog/At noon?/What is it inside the imagination that keeps surprising us/At odd moments when something is given back/We didn't know we had had/In solitude, spontaneously, and with great joy?`Lonesome Pine Special'And now consider these lines from Black Zodiac: ...For instance, in 1944...I was nine, the fourth grade.../I remember telling Brooklyn, my best friend, my **** was stiff all night./Nine years old! My ****! All night!/We talked about it for days,/Oak Ridge abstracted and elsewhere,/,D-Day and Normandy come and gone,/All eyes on the new world's sun king,/Its rising up and its going down.`Apologia Pro Vita Sua'Those lines are not only bad,they're embarrassing! Apparently, Mr. Wright is incapable of distinguishing good from bad poetry. If he is,then his editor at FSG should have enough sense to tell this author when sections of the poem do not work.If you wish to read Mr. Wright's best poetry,poetry that really sets the page on fire, read his earlier work from China Trace up to Zone Journals.

Charles Wright, while the 20th century was settling down to its own special oblivion, silently has become one of America's most important poets. His love for language is always evident in his writing. I have come to welcome his poetry into my world. I know that before I am through with a Wright poem I will come across a line so perfect I will want to weep. Black Zodiac, in keeping with Wright's upward surge, is a brilliant piece of work. This volume is part 2 of a trilogy he began with Chicamauga. Years from today the world will look upon Wright as, perhaps, America's most important poet and surely will consider Black Zodiac as one of his most important works.