Hard Freight

by Charles Wright

Book by Wright, Charles

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Charles Wright is an American poet. He shared the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music: Selected Early Poems and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac.

From 2014 to 2015, he served as the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States. Charles Wright is often ranked as one of the best American poets of his generation. He attended Davidson College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; he also served four years in the U.S. Army, and it was while stationed in Italy that Wright began to read and write poetry. He is the author of over 20 books of poetry.

Charles Wright is a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and the Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. His many collections of poetry and numerous awards—including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize—have proven that he is, as Jay Parini once said, “among the best poets” of his generation. Yet Wright remains stoic about such achievements: it is not the poet, but the poems, as he concluded to Genoways. “One wants one’s work to be paid attention to, but I hate personal attention. I just want everyone to read the poems. I want my poetry to get all the attention in the world, but I want to be the anonymous author.”

Reviews

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong stuff. Like this: “—So one has to dive, sinking more rapidly than what sinks
in advance of you: once down, once under it all, the
quieter it becomes, the less fearful it becomes, the
quieter it becomes.”

[Jeffrey Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the imagery of the poems in Hard Freight and found myself pausing frequently to reread a phrase or a line to enjoy it in its isolation. In general I also really enjoyed the pace of the language throughout. This allowed for a slow contemplation without feeling sluggish or forced. The poems felt natural when read aloud or silently and didn’t feel forced or wedded to a form or intent. Even though the poems are older than I am, they don’t feel dated. I will admit though that some of the works left me feeling stuck in a space outside the setting of the poem and unable to step in, specifically those poems too strongly linked with a specific person or place (some of the Venice poems, Wilde, Corvo). But even these poems we’re a pleasure to read.

[Caleb Benadum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although Charles Wright is a poet of renown, I find it incredibly difficult to enjoy reading him. His metaphors seem vague, his poetry, more often than not, seems to me to be about nothing. While well-written, I cannot see nor identify with the substance behind his words. Sometimes he seems as well to be too chained to his strict syllabic construction, and strong line endings, and it harms the flow of his poetry in my opinion.