{"title":"Charles Wright","description":"\u003cp\u003eCharles Wright (born in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee) is a poet whose work engages landscape — particularly the Southern Appalachian mountains and Laguna Beach, California — with meditative attention to mortality, memory, and spiritual longing. He studied at Davidson College and served in the U.S. Army before earning an MFA from the University of Iowa. He taught for many years at the University of Virginia. His trilogy \u003cem\u003eCountry Music\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe World of the Ten Thousand Things\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eNegative Blue\u003c\/em\u003e earned him the Pulitzer Prize for \u003cem\u003eBlack Zodiac\u003c\/em\u003e (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997) and the National Book Award for \u003cem\u003eCountry Music: Selected Early Poems\u003c\/em\u003e (1982). He received the Bollingen Prize and served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2014 to 2015.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"oblivion-banjo-the-poetry-of-charles-wright","title":"Oblivion Banjo: The Poetry of Charles Wright","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe selected works of one of our finest American poets\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe thread that dangles us \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ebetween a dark and a darker dark, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIs luminous, sure, but smooth sided. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDon't touch it here, and don't touch it there. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDon't touch it, in fact, anywhere--\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLet it dangle and hold us hard, let it flash and swing.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e--from \"Scar Tissue\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOver the course of his work--more than twenty books in total--Charles Wright has built \"one of the truly distinctive bodies of poetry created in the second half of the twentieth century\" (David Young, \u003ci\u003eContemporary Poets\u003c\/i\u003e). \u003ci\u003eOblivion Banjo\u003c\/i\u003e, a capacious new selection spanning his decades-long career, showcases the central themes of Wright's poetry: \"language, landscape, and the idea of God.\" No matter the precise subject of each poem, on display here is a vast and rich interior life, a mind wrestling with the tenuous relationship between the ways we describe the world and its reality. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe recipient of almost every honor in poetry--the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize, to name a few--and a former poet laureate of the United States, Wright is an essential voice in American letters. \u003ci\u003eOblivion Banjo\u003c\/i\u003e is the perfect distillation of his inimitable career--for devout fans and newcomers alike.","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793360781354,"sku":"9780374539085","price":50.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/oblivion-banjo-the-poetry-of-charles-wright-9685194.jpg?v=1762149825"},{"product_id":"appalachia-poems","title":"Appalachia: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eAlmost thirty years ago, Charles Wright (who teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and has won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Poetry) began a poetic project of astonishing scope--a series of three trilogies. The first trilogy was collected in \u003ci\u003eCountry Music\u003c\/i\u003e, the second in \u003ci\u003eThe World of the Ten Thousand Things\u003c\/i\u003e, and the third began with \u003ci\u003eChickamauga\u003c\/i\u003e and continued with \u003ci\u003eBlack Zodiac\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003ci\u003eAppalachia\u003c\/i\u003e is the last book in the final trilogy of this pathbreaking and majestic series. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIf \u003ci\u003eCountry Music\u003c\/i\u003e traced \"Wright's journey from the soil to the stars\" and \u003ci\u003eThe World of the Ten Thousand Things\u003c\/i\u003e \"lovingly detailed\" our world and made \"a visionary map of the world beyond\" (James Longenbach, \u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e), this final book in Wright's great work reveals a master's confrontation with his own mortality and his stunning ability to discover transcendence in the most beautifully ordinary of landscapes.","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793360846890,"sku":"9780374526245","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/appalachia-poems-5516003.jpg?v=1762149824"},{"product_id":"negative-blue-selected-later-poems","title":"Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe culmination of the cycle that won Wright the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eTime will append us like suit coats left out overnight\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOn a deck chair, loose change dead weight in the right pocket, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSilk handkerchief limp with dew, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e sleeves in a slow dance with the wind.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnd love will kill us--\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLove, and the winds from under the earth\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e that grind us to grain-out.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e--from \"Still Life with Spring and Time to Burn\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhen Charles Wright published \u003ci\u003eAppalachia \u003c\/i\u003ein 1998, it marked the completion of a nine-volume project, of which James Longenbach wrote in the \u003ci\u003eBoston Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \"Charles Wright's trilogy of trilogies--call it 'The Appalachian Book of the Dead'--is sure to be counted among the great long poems of the century.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe first two of those trilogies were collected in \u003ci\u003eCountry Music\u003c\/i\u003e (1982) and \u003ci\u003eThe World of the Ten Thousand Things\u003c\/i\u003e (1990). Here Wright adds to his third trilogy (\u003ci\u003eChickamauga \u003c\/i\u003e[1995], \u003ci\u003eBlack Zodiac\u003c\/i\u003e [1997], and \u003ci\u003eAppalachia \u003c\/i\u003e[1998]) a section of new poems that suggest new directions in the work of this sensuous, spirit-haunted poet.","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793360977962,"sku":"9780374527730","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/negative-blue-selected-later-poems-7287334.jpg?v=1762149824"},{"product_id":"black-zodiac-poems","title":"Black Zodiac: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eWinner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eBlack Zodiac\u003c\/i\u003e offers poems suffused with spiritual longing--lyrical meditations on faith, religion, heritage, and morality. The poems also explore aging and mortality with restless grace. Approaching his vast subjects by way of small moments, Wright magnifies details to reveal truths much larger than the quotidian happenings that engendered them. His is an astonishing, flexible, domestic-yet-universal verse. As the critic Helen Vendler has observed, Wright is a poet who \"sounds like nobody else.\"","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793361043498,"sku":"9780374525361","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/black-zodiac-poems-4341063.jpg?v=1762149765"},{"product_id":"bye-and-bye","title":"Bye and Bye","description":"\u003cp\u003eOver the course of nineteen collections of poems, Charles Wright has built \"one of the truly distinctive bodies of poetry created in the second half of the twentieth century\" (David Young, \u003ci\u003eContemporary Poets\u003c\/i\u003e). \u003ci\u003eBye-and-Bye\u003c\/i\u003e, which brings together selections from Wright's more recent work--including the entirety of \u003ci\u003eLittlefoot\u003c\/i\u003e, Wright's moving, book-length meditation on mortality--showcases the themes and images that have defined his mature work: the true affinity between writer and subject, human and nature; the tenuous relationship between description and actuality; and the search for a truth that transcends change and death. \u003ci\u003eBye-and-Bye \u003c\/i\u003eis a wonderful introduction to the late work of one of America's finest and best-loved poets.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793361174570,"sku":"9780374533175","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/bye-and-bye-1360385.jpg?v=1762149764"},{"product_id":"world-of-the-ten-thousand-things-poems-1980-1990","title":"World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis 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: \u003ci\u003eThe Southern Cross\u003c\/i\u003e (1981), \u003ci\u003eThe Other Side of the River\u003c\/i\u003e (1984), and \u003ci\u003eZone Journals\u003c\/i\u003e (1988).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793361240106,"sku":"9780374523268","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/world-of-the-ten-thousand-things-poems-1980-1990-5655891.jpg?v=1762149765"},{"product_id":"chickamauga","title":"Chickamauga","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis volume, Wright's eleventh book of poetry, is a vivid, contemplative, far-reaching, yet wholly plain-spoken collection of moments appearing as lenses through which to see the world beyond our moments. \u003ci\u003eChickamauga\u003c\/i\u003e is also a virtuoso exploration of the power of concision in lyric poetry--a testament to the flexible music of the long line Wright has made his own. As a reviewer in \u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e noted: \"Wright is one of those rare and gifted poets who can turn thought into music. Following his self-prescribed regimen of purgatio, illuminato, and contemplatio, Wright spins one lovely lyric after another on such elemental subjects as sky, trees, birds, months, and seasons. But the real subject is the thinking process itself and the mysterious alchemy of language: 'The world is a language we never quite understand.'\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793361305642,"sku":"9780374524814","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/chickamauga-6658855.jpg?v=1762149764"},{"product_id":"sestets","title":"Sestets","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSestets \u003c\/i\u003eis the nineteenth book from one of the country's most acclaimed poets, a masterpiece of formal rigor and a profound meditation on nature and mortality. It is yet another virtuosic showcase for Charles Wright's acclaimed descriptive powers, and also an inquiry into the nature of description itself, both seductive and dangerous: \"a virtual world\/ Unfit for the virtuous.\" Like his previous books, \u003ci\u003eSestets \u003c\/i\u003eis seeded with the lyrics of old love songs and spirituals, and \"there is always room to connect his highly polished poems to the world where most of us lead mundane lives\" (\u003ci\u003eMiami Herald\u003c\/i\u003e). Soaring and earthy, lyrical and direct, Charles Wright is an American treasure, and his search for a truth that transcends change and death settles finally on the beauties of nature and language: \"Time is a graceless enemy, but purls as it comes and goes.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793361371178,"sku":"9780374532147","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/sestets-6018801.jpg?v=1762149764"},{"product_id":"wrong-end-of-the-rainbow-poems","title":"Wrong End of the Rainbow: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Wright has a hunk of the ineffable in his teeth and he won't let go. In poem after poem, he plumbs our deepest relationships with nature, time, love, death, creation. Wright's search breaks all the barriers of time, space, action, for its dramatic narrative simply refuses to acknowledge the usual unities, as though all time were this time, all places this place and all actions one.\"--Philip Levine, from his citation for the 1996 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eCharles Wright\u003c\/b\u003e was named chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 1999 and has won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Prize and a \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Prize. Since 1983, he has been at the University of Virginia.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793361436714,"sku":"9781932511123","price":9.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/wrong-end-of-the-rainbow-poems-3748303.jpg?v=1762149765"},{"product_id":"littlefoot","title":"Littlefoot","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eLittlefoot\u003c\/i\u003e, the eighteenth book from one of this country's most acclaimed poets, is an extended meditation on mortality, on the narrator's search of the skies for a road map and for last instructions on \"the other side of my own death.\" Following the course of one year, the poet's seventieth, we witness the seasons change over his familiar postage stamps of soil, realizing that we are reflected in them, that the true affinity is between writer and subject, human and nature, one becoming the other, as the river is like our blood, \"it powers on, \/ out of sight, out of mind.\" Seeded with lyrics of old love songs and spirituals, here we meet solitude, resignation, and a glad cry that while a return to the beloved earth is impossible, \"all things come from splendor,\" and the urgent question that the poet can't help but ask: \"Will you miss me when I'm gone?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793361502250,"sku":"9780374531218","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/littlefoot-4441498.jpg?v=1762149765"},{"product_id":"short-history-of-the-shadow-poems","title":"Short History of the Shadow: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eLuminous new poems from one who \"has long been a poet of gorgeous description\" --William Logan, \u003ci\u003eThe New Criterion\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eLandscape, as Wang Wei says, softens the sharp edges of isolation.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDon't just do something, sit there.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnd so I have, so I have, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e the seasons curling around me like smoke, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eGone to the end of the earth and back without a sound.\u003c\/i\u003e--from \"Body and Soul II\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis is Charles Wright's first collection of verse since the gathering, in \u003ci\u003eNegative Blue\u003c\/i\u003e, of his \"Appalachian Book of the Dead,\" a trilogy of trilogies hailed \"among the great long poems of the century\" (James Longenbach, \u003ci\u003eBoston Review\u003c\/i\u003e). In \u003ci\u003eA Short History of the Shadow\u003c\/i\u003e, Wright's return to the landscapes of his early work finds his art resilient in a world haunted by death and the dead.","brand":"Charles Wright","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793361567786,"sku":"9780374528799","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/short-history-of-the-shadow-poems-6441963.jpg?v=1762149765"}],"url":"https:\/\/thepoetryshop.com\/collections\/charles-wright.oembed","provider":"The Poetry Shop LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}