Scar Tissue: Poems [Hardcover]

Charles Wright (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374254273 | ISBN-13: 978-0374254278 | Publication Date: July 25, 2006 | Edition: 1st

Hard to imagine that no one counts,
that only things endure.
Unlike the seasons, our shirts don't shed,
Whatever we see does not see us,
however hard we look,
The rain in its silver earrings against the oak trunks,
The rain in its second skin.
--from "Scar Tissue II"

In his new collection, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Wright investigates the tenuous relationship between description and actuality--"thing is not an image"--but also reaffirms the project of attempting to describe, to capture the natural world and the beings in it, although he reminds us that landscape is not his subject matter but his technique: that language was always his subject--language and "the ghost of god." And in the dolomites, the clouds, stars, wind, and water that populate these poems, "something un-ordinary persists."

Scar Tissue is a groundbreaking work from a poet who "illuminates and exalts the entire astonishing spectrum of existence" (Booklist).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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). "There is no end to the other world," Wright announces, "no matter where it is," and that other world shimmers and glows amid this one: "Wet days are their own reward for now,/ litter's lapse and the pebble's gleam." Wright sounds by turns learned and folksy: Chinese classical poets continue to give Wright models and precedents, while Kafka's parable of the hunter Gracchus (who travels the world in his coffin) provides a darker undertone. Ischia, Rome and Florence compete with southern roads in Wright's scenery, where "Whatever is insignificant has its own strength." The title sequence concentrates on nostalgia, "Lost loves and the love of loss," trying to find a deeper appreciation both of the historical past and of the poet's childhood memories. 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. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

A philosopher-poet of the Appalachian South, Wright reflects on time's tricky game of give-and-take and the life-defining practice of translating nature's semaphore into words. In deeply etched and finely burled poems veined with show-stopping metaphors, Wright describes the press of sunlight, the journeys of clouds, the music of water, and the mass of mountains. Against this earthly grandeur, humankind is mere mist, smoke, dew: "We are Nature's nobodies." At the heart of this beautiful and questioning collection is an undeclared yet electrifying ars poetica, so that in "Confessions of a Song and Dance Man," Wright first mocks his servitude to language, then neatly undermines vaudevillian self-deprecation by linking himself to the red-winged blackbird, since both bird and poet need "a place to ruffle and strut, / a place to perch and sing." Marshaling language in an attempt to lasso life, lash down memories, and endure nostalgia, the poet is "hoping for words that are not impermanent." Although Wright fears that all is fox fire, the eerie glow of decay, he seeks the preserving gleam of amber. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 88 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (July 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374254273
• ISBN-13: 978-0374254278
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,039,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Explorations in the underlap..., October 10, 2007

By 

G. D. Geiss (Harrisburg, Pa. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Scar Tissue: Poems (Paperback)

Poetry, they say, can be partly defined as an utterance incapable of being paraphrased. That is true of all Charles Wright's work, insofar as I'm familiar with it, but especially so of Scar Tissue.

This is a work that exists in the inbetween. It is full of things felt, not known; things intuited, not reasoned; of "the endless sky with its endless cargo of cloud parts" (Scar Tissue); and of whole days where "the wind will comb out it's hair through the teeth of the evergreens." and "the sunlight will sun itself/ On the back porch of the cottage, out of the weather." (Scar Tissue II)

It is beautiful, quietly and very familiarly ruminative: just you and an old friend sipping some single batch bourbon (Wright is, after all, from down that way) talking with an easy speculative walking pace kind of riff about memories, places you've been, things you've seen, the geography you belong to. I can not begin to tell you how much I love these poems. Appearances by: Li Po, Hildegard of Bingen, Basho, Heraclitus and the Appalachia Dog....a metallic red '49 Ford, chopped and channeled, a "major ride" seen once "dragging the gut" in Kingsport and remembered ever after with it's "taillights like nobody's eyes/ Low-riding west toward the rising sun." (Appalachia Dog)

To my view, there are no duds or weak spots. There's lots to think about and lots to just plain enjoy and, frankly, it doesn't make your head hurt. But it is the expression of the felt intangible that distinguishes these poems for me or as Wright himself puts it: "The absence the two/ horses have left on the bare slope,/ The silence that grazes like two shapes where they have been." and then "Flecked in the underlap, however,/ half-glimpsed, half-recognized,/ Something unordinary persists,/ Something unstill, never-sleeping, just possible past reason./ Then unflecked by evening's overflow/ and its counter current." (Against the American Grain)

In this day and age, for poems this highly decorated from a poet with Wright's critical renown to be this readable and widely accessable is a minor miracle. Great great work. Pick it up; join this extraordinary fellow, Mr. Charles Wright, in his explorations in the underlap.....
Highly recommended.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Welcome to my backyard. Would you like some zen with that?, December 23, 2006

By 

Marcus Aurelius (PA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Scar Tissue: Poems (Hardcover)

Charles Wright is probably one of the best poets around today. His images are strong, his language direct, his allusions trackable. He's also one of the few poets I've read over a period of 15 years or more, so it's with great anticipation that I look forward to his new work. Some of these poems appeared in a chapbook THE WRONG SIDE OF THE RAINBOW, so I felt lucky to have had a headstart on SCAR TISSUE. It's a good read, a good reread, and good for study.