This important book--shot through with reflections on, explorations of, and hymns to both our natural and spiritual realms--features the three poetry collections Charles Wright published during the 1980s: The Southern Cross (1981), The Other Side of the River (1984), and Zone Journals (1988).
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"Since the early 1980s, Wright has increasingly abandoned short lyrics for journal poems that weave diverse thematic threads into a single autobiographical fabric. . . . [He] is at liberty to spin out extended meditations that pick up, work with, lay aside, and return again to landscapes, historical events, and ideas. . . . Wright's gift for verbal music, his ability to evoke sensory experience and a boldness of metaphorical reference get the juices flowing. . . . [The World of the Ten Thousand Things is] a single poetic sequence worthy of comparison with such extended works as "The Bridge" by Hart Crane, "The Far Field" by Theodore Roethke, and "Dream Songs" by John Berryman. . . . [Wright is] a poet of great purity and originality."--Richard Tillinghast, The New York Times Book Review
"There is no poet of his generation whose career has unfolded with such genuine authority as Charles Wright's, or whom I read with more astonishment and gratitude. There is no book published this year I could recommend more highly."--J.D. McClatchy, Poetry
"There is no poet of his generation whose career has unfolded with such genuine authority as Charles Wright's, or whom I read with more astonishment and gratitude. There is no book published this year I could recommend more highly."--J.D. McClatchy, Poetry
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Appropriate introduction to the works of a master,
This review is from: The World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990 (Paperback)
This collection begins with "Homage to Paul Cezanne," one of Wright's most accessible poems and the first poem I would pick to teach students about metaphor. It begins:
The dead are a cadmium blue. We spread them with palette knives in broad blocks and planes. We layer them stroke by stroke In steps and ascending mass, in verticals raised from the earth. We choose, and layer them in, Blue and a blue and a breath, Circle and smudge, cross-beak and buttonhook, We layer them in. We squint hard and terrace them line by line. You can see in this passage the seeds of the lulling rhythm, like walking meditation, that has become Wright's signature: "Blue and a blue and a breath." In the fifteen years since this book was issued, Wright has refined his technique to become master of the minimalist nature lyric; this relatively early collection showcases the transition from poet to genius as the author gropes for and finds his music. Wright's work is among the best literature to come out of the South this century, and he is only improving with time. I can only assume that the entire Appalachian Book of the Dead series will be reprinted in one gigantic tome sometime in the next decade or two. In the meantime, if you can't afford to buy each of his books now, springing for this one is a great place to start.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly beautiful,
By
This review is from: The World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990 (Paperback)
This collection of poems is truly beautiful. Some of the material in here is accessible to anyone while some of it is more essoteric. Being a collection, it covers a wide range of work, some of which I like more than others. When Wright succeeds, though, he does so more brilliantly than any other contemporary poet I know of.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Images, Images,
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This review is from: The World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990 (Paperback)
I find him very difficult to understand. And I read a lot of poetry (Levertov, Collins, Kooser, Oliver, etc), but his images are wonderful. I would purchase the book just
to savor his images. They are wonderful and unique.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
At night, in the fish-light of the moon, the dead wear our white shirts To stay warm, and litter the fields. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
dwarf orchard, vine rows Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Blue Ridge, Long Island of the Holston, New York, North Carolina, Penguin Books, Ponte Pietra, Thinking of Dante New!
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At night, in the fish-light of the moon, the dead wear our white shirts To stay warm, and litter the fields. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
dwarf orchard, vine rows Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Blue Ridge, Long Island of the Holston, New York, North Carolina, Penguin Books, Ponte Pietra, Thinking of Dante New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 5
books:
15
books
cite this book:
See all 15 books citing this book
- The Lives of the Artists (Oxford World's Classics) by Giorgio Vasari on page 232
- Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin Classics) by Various on page 232
- Richard of St. Victor: The Twelve Patriarchs, the Mystical Ark, Book Three of Trinity (The Classics of Western spirituality) by Grover A. Zinn on page 232
- Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard on page 232
- National Gallery of Art: Washington (World of Art) by World of Art in Back Cover
- Where the Angels Come Toward Us: Selected Essays, Reviews & Interviews by David St. John on page 23, page 24, and page 30
- Shifting Ground: Reinventing Landscape in Modern American Poetry by Bonnie Costello in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- How Poets See the World: The Art of Description in Contemporary Poetry by Willard Spiegelman on page 98, and Back Matter
- Night Out: Poems About Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars by Kurt Brown in Back Matter
- Drive, They Said: Poems about Americans and Their Cars by Kurt Brown in Back Matter
See all 15 books citing this book
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