Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems

Charles Wright's poetry, despite its many merits, is not especcially reader-friendly. I worked my way through most of the poems of this volume and found most of them slipping through my mind like a stream of running water: poem followed poem until they all began to sound alike; I could not really grab onto any of them like I can those of several other well-known poets. Although this may sound like it is a criticism, it is not. For Wright has cultivated a unique voice, and as a result you can always identify a Wright poem by its unique wordprint. Reading a Wright poem almost invariably brings landscape into focus. The landscape imagery appears as a means of setting the mood of the poem, and as an inspiration for what the poet meditates upon: most often the vagaries and puzzlements of life. Wright does not seem to have any explicit subjects for many of his poems, just diverse almost random observations, sometimes in the form of quotations from other authors coupled with observations of the landscape. The reader who persists with this poetry will eventually grow to admire it, but it is an acquired taste. There is a subtle and elusive beauty hidden within many of the poems, which is not immediately apparent; you have to look for it. One example might be the following lines from Apologia Pro Vita Sua: How like the past the clouds are, Building and disappearing along the horizon, Inflecting the mountains, laying their shadows under our feet, For us to cross over on. Out of their insides fire falls, ice falls, What we remember that still remembers us, earth and air fall. Neither, however, can resurrect or redeem us, Moving, as both must, ever away toward opposite corners. Neither has been where we're going, bereft of an attitude. Personally speaking, I have grown to enjoy reading Wright's work. But Wright does definitely take some getting used to. There is a certain bleak quality in these poems, a sense of abandonment. Wright takes the negative path, through the dark night of the soul, and attempts to capture the hidden beauty of that path. His voice appears to be stoic and resigned, but not cynical. I recommend this book for anyone who enjoys thoughtful, sophisticated poetry.

It's interesting to see what Wright has done with this long-awaited third installment in his Dantesque trilogy. NEGATIVE BLUE is subtitled SELECTED LATER POEMS, but in fact it includes nearly everything from the last three books. There are a handful of poems excluded from CHICKAMAUGA, BLACK ZODIAC is reprinted complete, and only one poem is excluded from APPALACHIA. Also, there is a fine (and sometimes funny) concluding sequence of new poems, "North American Bear," which cements the book's relationship to the Paradiso.Wright can sometimes drift into opacity, but on the whole these are fascinating poems about his three favorite subjects: language, landscape, and the idea of God.