Black Zodiac (Hardcover)

by Charles Wright (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
"Time and light are the same thing somewhere behind our backs," Charles Wright supposes in "Meditation on Form and Measure." That's just one line from one poem in this fine collection, but it goes a long way toward capturing the flavor of the project. These poems are investigations into the Big Truths, but they're carried out with a subtle sense of mischief as well as reverence. Poetry refers to the "sheer wisdom" in Wright's work, and Helen Vendler writes that he "never ceases to astonish."

From Library Journal
In the magisterial opening poem, "Apologia Pro Vita Sua," 1983 National Book Awrd winner Wright claims, "Journal and landscape/ ?Discredited form, discredited subject matter?/ I tried to resuscitate them both, breath and blood,/ making them whole again." It's an apt description of his poetry, which reads like a slightly mad, language-drenched tour of a variety of odd but tantalizingly familiar landscapes (the word comes up constantly): "Midsummer. Irish overcast. Oatmeal-colored sky"; "shank of the afternoon, wan weight-light"; "these few sad stains/ Stuck to the landscape/ December dark"; "Nothing is flat-lit and tabula rasaed in Charlotteville"; and, finally, "Milton paints purple trees. Avery./ And Wolf Kahn too./ I've liked their landscapes." It feels like cheating to write a review that's half quotations, but Wright's luscious jumble of language simply must be experienced first-hand. Along the way he admonishes: "Before you bear witness/ Be sure you have something that calls for a witnessing." These poems bear witness to a rich and contradictory world (told, as it should be, at a slant), and they must be witnessed themselves. Highly recommended.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 85 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T) (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374114102
• ISBN-13: 978-0374114107
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #475,154 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The "seasons" of Charles Wright, April 17, 2000

By	Sara Connell (Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Zodiac: Poems (Paperback)

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.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Solipsism, January 3, 1999

By	Paul Frandano (Reston, Va. USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Language is the key..., February 29, 2000

By	Sam Rasnake (America) - See all my reviews

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.