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Buffalo Yoga: Poems
"[Wright's] penetrating and ravishingly gorgeous lyrical poems are at once classically philosophical and freshly revealing" ( Booklist )
Never has Charles Wright's vision been more closely aligned with the work of the ancient Chinese painters and writers who inform his poetry than in his newest collection. Wright's short lyrics, in Charles Simic's words, "achieve a level of eloquence where the reader says to himself, if this is not wisdom, I don't know what is" ( The New York Review of Books ). The poems in Buffalo Yoga are pristine examples of the Tennessee poet's deft, painterly touch-"crows in a caterwaul" are "scored like black notes in the bare oak"-and his oblique, expansive, and profound interrogation of mortality, as in the title sequence, where the soul is "a rhythmical knot. / That form unties. Or reties."
Never has Charles Wright's vision been more closely aligned with the work of the ancient Chinese painters and writers who inform his poetry than in his newest collection. Wright's short lyrics, in Charles Simic's words, "achieve a level of eloquence where the reader says to himself, if this is not wisdom, I don't know what is" ( The New York Review of Books ). The poems in Buffalo Yoga are pristine examples of the Tennessee poet's deft, painterly touch-"crows in a caterwaul" are "scored like black notes in the bare oak"-and his oblique, expansive, and profound interrogation of mortality, as in the title sequence, where the soul is "a rhythmical knot. / That form unties. Or reties."
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
4 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Charles Wright
247 books110 followersCharles 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.”
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.”
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 14, 2022
Read mostly aloud while doing other evening things around my apartment. Delicious sentences. Ideas difficult to follow but words nonetheless beautifully strung together. Wright’s articulations of memory are always worth the while, examples from these poems as collected below:
“May the past be merciful, / the landscape have pity on me— / Forgive me my words, forgive me my utterances.”
“All guilt and dull ache, / we sit in stillness and think of forgotten things.”
“How strong the heart is to entertain such loveliness. / How stringent the stars are, / spreading their welcome across the sky. / Passport stamped, the barrier lifting, how easily one is gathered.”
“Desire, at last, a remembered landscape, / and never the same hurt twice.”
“We wait between goodbye and hello, / an ounce of absence, an ounce of regret, / Standing on one foot, whistling a half-remembered tune.”
He also writes stuff like “hyphens of light,” “star-strung voices,” “feathery geography,” and “handful of sleep,” which are such lovely things.
“May the past be merciful, / the landscape have pity on me— / Forgive me my words, forgive me my utterances.”
“All guilt and dull ache, / we sit in stillness and think of forgotten things.”
“How strong the heart is to entertain such loveliness. / How stringent the stars are, / spreading their welcome across the sky. / Passport stamped, the barrier lifting, how easily one is gathered.”
“Desire, at last, a remembered landscape, / and never the same hurt twice.”
“We wait between goodbye and hello, / an ounce of absence, an ounce of regret, / Standing on one foot, whistling a half-remembered tune.”
He also writes stuff like “hyphens of light,” “star-strung voices,” “feathery geography,” and “handful of sleep,” which are such lovely things.
March 31, 2022
Wright's poems are the kind which you might read through once, fairly easily, and then read through again for another level of meaning. In this collection, the ones I got the most out of were the longer sequences and those more focused on images than on story-telling, which isn't necessarily the norm for me. Here, though, the sequences progressed in such a way as to feel like slowly blooming flowers and films, and I adored them, whereas many images were offered with such simple flavor that I couldn't help but enjoy them and re-read immediately.
Wright will probably never be one of my favorite poets, but this little book is certainly my favorite collection from him so far, and I think I'll probably return to a number of the poems here.
Wright will probably never be one of my favorite poets, but this little book is certainly my favorite collection from him so far, and I think I'll probably return to a number of the poems here.
April 19, 2018
The declination of desire
is greatly to be desired.
Likewise cessation of laud and lisp.
Out of the west window, lights like the lights of floating seabirds.
Tides of darkness rock them among the trees, back and forth,
Forth and back,
Desire, at last, a remembered landscape,
and never the same hurt twice.
(from Charles Wright and the 940 Locust Avenue Heraclitean Rhythm Band)
is greatly to be desired.
Likewise cessation of laud and lisp.
Out of the west window, lights like the lights of floating seabirds.
Tides of darkness rock them among the trees, back and forth,
Forth and back,
Desire, at last, a remembered landscape,
and never the same hurt twice.
(from Charles Wright and the 940 Locust Avenue Heraclitean Rhythm Band)
December 23, 2015
I wanted so much to enjoy Wright's unique use of form and simplistic address to nature, but something was missing from his verse. I will wait a couple of months and plunge into a reread.
October 12, 2024
A minute of splendor is a minute of ash.
-- "Portrait of the Artist by Li Shang-Yin"
The world is a magic book, and we its sentences.
We read it and read ourselves.
We close it and turn the page down
And never come back.
Returned to what we once were before we became what we are.
This is the tale the world tells, this is the way it ends.
-- "Buffalo Yoga"
I think I'll lie down just here for a while,
the sun on my cheek,
The wind like grass stems across my face,
And listen to what the world says,
the luminous, transubstantiated world,
That holds me like nothing in its look.
-- "Buffalo Yoga Coda III"
The brief secrets are still here,
and the light has come back.
The word remember touches my hand,
But I shake it off and watch the turkey buzzards bank and wheel
Against the occluded sky.
All of the little names sink down,
weighted with what is invisible,
But no one will utter them, no one will smooth their rumpled hair.
-- "Words Are the Diminution of All Things"
The world reloads
and offers up
Its lesser mansions, its smaller rooms.
This is no metaphor, this is the way it just is.
Creaking of wheels endemic under the earth,
slick pistil and piston,
Pulleys raising the platforms up, and pulling them down.
We walk on the roofs of greater houses,
some of them quick, some not,
All of them turning like a river, all of them ours.
-- "Saturday Afternoon"
Stars are here when we come and stars are here when we go.
No one will ever know their secrets,
no one will break their codes,
So absent and all at once,
where all things are forgot.
Such useless change in our pants pockets, such dried flowers.
-- "Star Turn III"
-- "Portrait of the Artist by Li Shang-Yin"
The world is a magic book, and we its sentences.
We read it and read ourselves.
We close it and turn the page down
And never come back.
Returned to what we once were before we became what we are.
This is the tale the world tells, this is the way it ends.
-- "Buffalo Yoga"
I think I'll lie down just here for a while,
the sun on my cheek,
The wind like grass stems across my face,
And listen to what the world says,
the luminous, transubstantiated world,
That holds me like nothing in its look.
-- "Buffalo Yoga Coda III"
The brief secrets are still here,
and the light has come back.
The word remember touches my hand,
But I shake it off and watch the turkey buzzards bank and wheel
Against the occluded sky.
All of the little names sink down,
weighted with what is invisible,
But no one will utter them, no one will smooth their rumpled hair.
-- "Words Are the Diminution of All Things"
The world reloads
and offers up
Its lesser mansions, its smaller rooms.
This is no metaphor, this is the way it just is.
Creaking of wheels endemic under the earth,
slick pistil and piston,
Pulleys raising the platforms up, and pulling them down.
We walk on the roofs of greater houses,
some of them quick, some not,
All of them turning like a river, all of them ours.
-- "Saturday Afternoon"
Stars are here when we come and stars are here when we go.
No one will ever know their secrets,
no one will break their codes,
So absent and all at once,
where all things are forgot.
Such useless change in our pants pockets, such dried flowers.
-- "Star Turn III"
August 11, 2022
Buffalo Yoga by Charles Wright (one of my favorite poets) is a slow, articulation of trials and hand-spun musicology. Buffalo Yoga grapples and plies with new mythos and earns its place in the pantheon of rarely mentioned, towering poetry collections. We see this collection as a momento mori of passing thought and space. This book is one of Wright’s lesser known collections but well worth the read.
March 6, 2018
Not a book to grasp in one reading, which is a sign of good poems. I enjoy the visual tones, the spiritual explorations that don’t forget the earthen reality of this world. Wright’s poetry is a great sagacious voice to have in your ear.
September 25, 2023
Favorites:
Buffalo Yoga
The Gospel According to St. Someone
Words are the Diminution of All Things
Arrivederci Kingsport
Dio Ed Io
Nostalgia III
Saturday Afternoon
Little Apocalypse
Snake Eyes
Heavy naturalistic imagery paint beautiful poetry with esoteric meanings.
Buffalo Yoga
The Gospel According to St. Someone
Words are the Diminution of All Things
Arrivederci Kingsport
Dio Ed Io
Nostalgia III
Saturday Afternoon
Little Apocalypse
Snake Eyes
Heavy naturalistic imagery paint beautiful poetry with esoteric meanings.
July 15, 2015
Charles Wright's Buffalo Yoga poems contain no buffaloes, but do interweave personal memories with the natural world, history and biography.
"Everything's more essential in norther light, horses/Lie down in the dry meadow,/Clouds trail, like prairie schooners..."
And the losses of the past are like the absence of buffalo from a plain.
"Thus do we take our deaths up on our shoulders and walk and walk,/ Trying to get back
Wright's prosy and natural style still has a subtle eloquence, and only falters a bit in the latter third of the collection. But it is a worth collection, accessible, yet deep.
"Everything's more essential in norther light, horses/Lie down in the dry meadow,/Clouds trail, like prairie schooners..."
And the losses of the past are like the absence of buffalo from a plain.
"Thus do we take our deaths up on our shoulders and walk and walk,/ Trying to get back
Wright's prosy and natural style still has a subtle eloquence, and only falters a bit in the latter third of the collection. But it is a worth collection, accessible, yet deep.
June 6, 2011
Wright has such an amazing voice that penetrates deep. His poetry is that of a man with beautiful vision; you can feel the power and depth and meaning to his words. He doesn't write to write, nor does he write to express emotions beyond himself. He does what he does because it's a part of him. I feel, every time I read a poem, that he's just given me a little-or big-piece of himself. Five star, buy it, buy multiple copies for your friends, definately. My copy is well worn. (:
October 26, 2011
The landscape is empty of buffalos. There is a lot of reference to the North American landscape and nature which is well interwoven with what is going on in the poems but there are no bison and there is no yoga. There are hintings into the direction of eastern philosophies and views but the main philospophical and theological setting is western Christian. I like the poems as such but I do not see the connection to the title.
October 12, 2013
Definitely Wright's signature style is present. These take a bit longer to get to the emotional impact as they are more journal-like in appearance and style. Still good, just not his best. Recommended.
April 7, 2008
Read it for class; didn't find it particularly interesting. There were a few excellent lines, but they were buried in excessively long poems.
March 26, 2012
Excellent. This is the kind of book that makes me want to stop writing because no poetry I produce will ever be this good.
April 26, 2012
Favorites: "Portrait of the Artist in a Prospect of Stone," "January II," "My Own Little Civil War"
February 5, 2013
I had a feeling I would love this...and I was right! Rekindled my love for Chinese landscape poetry, with the quietness and softness of being. Glad I have this on my shelf to revisit.
August 5, 2016
There are some gems in here, particularly with the fractured short poems at the very beginning.
Couldn't make it through the title poem.
Couldn't make it through the title poem.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews