About the Author

Charles Wright, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award, teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Reviews

"The phrasemaking lyricism of this 17th volume plays to Wright's familiar strengths: 42 long-lined poems mix calm, Taoist-inflected wisdom with lush descriptions of landscapes in Italy, North Carolina (where he grew up) and Virginia's Blue Ridge country (where he now lives) . . . Wright makes a slight departure from his recent books in the valedictory, even triumphant, feel of this one: long content to chronicle flux and presence, Wright looks these days to the future, in which the world and its beauty outlast us." --Publishers Weekly

A restless spirituality haunts this latest outing from Pulitzer Prize winner Wright (Black Zodiac), a collection of meditations that question "the Heracletian backwash" of memory, the relative significance (if any) of human presence in the universe, and our Romantic nostalgia for the sunlit and moonlit landscapes that "ignite us into a false love for the physical world." It's not the world itself, Wright hints, but our imaginative recasting of it, in language or in art, that inspires us. Though his poems evoke an aura of Zen calm, a fascination with paradox and ambiguity suggesting a perspective poised just outside of time, they are Western at the core, proactive, willing to be distracted, unsatisfied with their own open-ended conclusions. If the spirit "is looking for somewhere to dissipate," its search may well be ceaseless. A "God-fearing agnostic," Wright recognizes our "desperation for unknown things, a thirst/ For endlessness that snakes through our bones...." Though Wright's longtime readers will find familiar territory here, they may also detect a sharper tone, as the poet, now 70, confronts mortality with renewed urgency. Recommended for most public and academic collections. Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

"The phrasemaking lyricism of this 17th volume plays to Wright's familiar strengths: 42 long-lined poems mix calm, Taoist-inflected wisdom with lush descriptions of landscapes in Italy, North Carolina (where he grew up) and Virginia's Blue Ridge country (where he now lives) . . . Wright makes a slight departure from his recent books in the valedictory, even triumphant, feel of this one: long content to chronicle flux and presence, Wright looks these days to the future, in which the world and its beauty outlast us." --Publishers Weekly