[.ca] Black Zodiac: Poems (ISBN 0374525366)

From Amazon.com:
"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."

voice, and time:
each time i read it i find a different favorite poem, formidible ways of addressing understood mystries

topsy turvy:
The cover of this book reproduces a masterpiece of Chinese calligraphy -- upside down. I once wrote to the publisher asking why they didn't turn it right-side up, but they never responded. I wonder if they did that intentionally, or through ignorance. That would be like printing a page from the Book of Kells upside down.

Yet I wonder about the direction of American Poetry:
I'm probably not going to win many friends with this, and since I don't realy believe in writting bad reviews anyhow, I might pull it later, but I feel that some important questions need to be asked, about modern poetry, and the direction books like Black Zodiac are taking us. Once I find those answers one way or another, that will be that, and my concerns will be satiated. 1. Is there a difference between name-checking new-age concepts in your poetry and truly understanding them? The perfect example of this is the fact that the piece of calligraphy on the cover, by a Chinese monk called Hui Su, is printed upside down. For me, this realy blows the credibility of any 'influence' that Wright can claim to draw from China. He repeatedly talks as if he thinks so deeply about these concepts from Asia, but he's realy looking for an exotic image, and a pretty picture. Like whoever designed his cover, he knows just enough about Asia to be dangerous. He can name the great notions of Asian though, but he doesn't even understand them enough to know top from bottom. Instead of a true insight into these issues, he's just using the old orientalist ploy of "The Mystic East." This just goes to show that the thoughts of Edward Said will be practical long after his death, and long after Charles Wright is swallowed up by the mediocrity that obscures many American poets of moderate skill after their 15 minutes of fame. 2. Is superficiality really enough to make a poet? I don't doubt that Wright's heart and mind are in the right place, he's asking the right questions, looking at the right things, but in the end, he doesn't bother to let them penetrate down deep into his poems. Like the calligraphy on the cover, they're just window dressing. It doesn't seem genuine, and so it comes accross like some teenager trying to sound grown up and intellectual by name dropping all to eagerly a few names here and there without realy comprehending the depth that drove these names to greatness. It is like a painter who coppies a master: his work will always be distorted because he can only see what is on the surface, the final product, not the genius, the vision, the understanding of unified principles that allowed the master to create from nothing. 3. So what is the condition of American poetry? Some people would say this superficiality is typical of American culture, but I don't believe it. The fact that he won the Pulitzer for this book may argue against me, but I think America has more depth than that. After all, look at what great poets America has produced: Gary Snyder, Frank O'Hara, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, the Harlem Rennaisance, and most obviously, Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost. Even though I don't even like all these poets, they are all deep, thoughtfull, mature poets, who pass up the cheap flashy tricks of mediocre poets in favor of deeper, more subdued verse. What is more, many of the great writters of Europe have found their first markets in America while their home countries rejected them. America knows good books from bad, good poets from the mediocre ones, we just have come to not expect greatness from contemporary American writers. That is the real shame. And what is worse, those who do look for greatness in American writers, like the Pulitzer comittee, tend to find it anywhere and everywhere. To be honest, I wouldn't say that Wright is a bad poet, just a mediocre one. Who could envision his name engraved in the anals of literary history even 50 years from now? Heck, who outside of poetry nuts even knows who he is? This, I think, is not due to any enate weakness as a writer on his part, but due to the fact that he doesn't seem to take serriously the ideas of contemplation and understanding that he talks so much about. To be honest, I have the same criticizms of Jorrie Grahm, another Pulitzer Winner. Just because she doesn't capitalize her sentances or use conventional line breaks doesn't make here a great poet. If I could sit down and talk with Charles Wright, I'm sure I would change my mind. I think he is a person who can intuit what is beautifull and intruiging in the world, but I just feel that it needs to develop more than it has in Black Zodiac. Untill I can ask my questions to him, and hear his answers, I'll reserve a recomendation of this book.

Why Black Zodiac?:
Considering the many excellent poetry books that were published in 1997, why did Charles Wright's Black Zodiac, which is not very good, win the most prestigious poetry award, the Pulitzer Prize? It probably has something to do with POLITICS viz. Jorie Graham told Helen Vendler to select Black Zodiac and soon after Wright -- naturally, Mark Strand. Although I don't think that Black Zodiac deserves the Pulitzer, I do think that Mr. Wright should have won the Pulitzer for China Trace, The Southern Cross and The Other Side of the River. The Other Side of the River and selections from Zone Journals were Mr. Wright's best books. After Zone Journals, Mr. Wright began to depend on skill, technique and repetition as a means of `crafting' his poems. In his earlier work, it seems as though his poems were spontaneously inspired and that they came together in entire stanzas or full sequences in which very little revision was applied, save for touch-up considerations. In the Paris Review Interview, Mr. Wright explained that he now counts every syllable and that he works on one line at a time. Unfortunately, it shows. Here is an example of Mr. Wright's earlier work. These lines are taken from The Other Side of the River: ... What is it about a known landscape/that tends to undo us,/That shuffles and picks us out/For terminal demarcation, the way a field of lupine/Seen in profusion deep in the timber/Suddenly seems to rise like a lavender ground fog/At noon?/What is it inside the imagination that keeps surprising us/At odd moments when something is given back/We didn't know we had had/In solitude, spontaneously, and with great joy? `Lonesome Pine Special' And now consider these lines from Black Zodiac: ... For instance, in 1944...I was nine, the fourth grade.../I remember telling Brooklyn, my best friend, my **** was stiff all night./Nine years old! My ****! All night!/We talked about it for days,/Oak Ridge abstracted and elsewhere,/,D-Day and Normandy come and gone,/All eyes on the new world's sun king,/Its rising up and its going down. `Apologia Pro Vita Sua' Those lines are not only bad,they're embarrassing! Apparently, Mr. Wright is incapable of distinguishing good from bad poetry. If he is,then his editor at FSG should have enough sense to tell this author when sections of the poem do not work. If you wish to read Mr. Wright's best poetry,poetry that really sets the page on fire, read his earlier work from China Trace up to Zone Journals.

& wholly modern:
This book is a beautifully eloquent, quiet meditation on so many mysteries & philosophies, influenced by both western & eastern canons.