A Short History of the Shadow: Poems

by Charles Wright

Book Overview

Luminous new poems from one who "has long been a poet of gorgeous description" --William Logan, The New Criterion

Landscape, as Wang Wei says, softens the sharp edges of isolation.
Don't just do something, sit there.
And so I have, so I have,
the seasons curling around me like smoke,
Gone to the end of the earth and back without a sound.--from "Body and Soul II"

This...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374528799
• ISBN13: 9780374528799
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

compelling

The sounds of this poetry are amazing. The music is unbound & sprawling. Wholly modern. Of all the Pulitzer Prize winners, Charles Wright is one of my favorites. This poetry is very idiosyncratic.

the latest from the master

"Every true poem is a spark,/and aspires to the condition of the original fire..." (from "Body and Soul II").In this, Wright's fifteenth volume, the language--urgent and palpable--spills off the page like a shower of sparks. Not since Yeats has a master poet in our language seemed poised to enter such a rich and important later phase. Wright is unquestionably the top dog of our poetry, and in this book his fire shows no sign of dimming.Personally I think that ths book (and fourteen others) are a must-read for anybody interested in what the English language is capable of.

Charles the composer

The poems in this book are so, so unique. Nobody else writes like Charles Wright. & one beautiful asoect about his writing is of course the SOUND. It's clear that the music of language is of prime importance to Charles Wright as a poet. Just listen to these few lines: "Soul-shunt and pat down, crumbs snow flecked across the back yard, then gone on the sun's tongue." My. The whole book sounds that refined. Also, the whole lexus beyond only the sounds is impeccable. For example, in Nine Panel Yaak River Screen, a poem of high ellipticism, there's a line where "sunlight opens her other leg." It's poetry that resonates with very deeply rooted decisions & organisation. Another poem ends "The broken dream-cries of angel half-dazed in the woods. The adjective and the noun." Wonderful.

Charles the composer

The poems in this book are so, so unique. Nobody else writes like Charles Wright. One beautiful aspect about his writing is of course the SOUND. It's clear that the music of language is of prime importance to Charles Wright as a poet. Just listen to these few lines: "Soul-shunt and pat down, crumbs snow flecked across the back yard, then gone on the sun's tongue." My. The whole book sounds that refined. Also, the whole lexus beyond only the sounds is impeccable. For example, in Nine Panel Yaak River Screen, a poem of high ellipticism, there's a line where "sunlight opens her other leg." It's poetry that resonates with very deeply rooted decisions & organisation. Another poem ends "The broken dream-cries of angel half-dazed in the woods. The adjective and the noun." Wonderful.

Charles the Comforter

Charles Wright's latest volume is a true heir to his previous work and a very fulfilling continuation of his main themes. No other contemporary poet, or perhaps any poet ever, has so insightfully unpacked the single mystery of our humanness like Wright. His basic metaphor remains intact: the mystery, and indeed the concept of God, in relation to man is examined through the vehicle of nature - from the tiny and seemingly insignificant, to the vast cosmos. All the while, that which is visible and that which is not, will nod in and out for their brilliant cameos - one moment it is language itself, the next, a dogwood bloom. His imagery remains unique, beautiful, and so inventive that ripping it out of context would only serve to confuse. Readers of Wright will be pleased that his melancholia of previous work has not been replaced so much as supplanted by a new sense of humor ("If This Is Where God's At, Why Is That Fish Dead?" and "If My Glasses Were Better, I Could See Where I'm Headed For" open the second section). Fellow poets will no doubt continue to marvel at his style. It has been said that viewing an Ansel Adams makes one never want to pick up a camera, and viewing a Walker Evans causes a desire to pick one up, yet reading Wright makes one realize there is no need for the amateur to attempt poetry. Wright's previous works have been called a "trilogy of Dantean scope" and one is reminded not only of Dante, but Joyce when examining this latest work. If Joyce's "trilogy" of Portrait, Ulysses, and Finnegan" were meant to be summed up in a coherent statement of the universes itself in a fourth work, prevented by his untimely death, as the legend goes, then that statement would likely resemble in spirit "A Short History of the Shadow." Wright once again reminds us that all of us struggle with, as he has stated "the indifferent silence of heaven," and he so tactfully and playfully resonates with our reflections on our mortality that he is more than a great poet, he is a great comforter.