Oblivion Banjo: The Poetry of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

The selected works of one of our finest American poets

The thread that dangles us
between a dark and a darker dark,
Is luminous, sure, but smooth sided.
Don’t touch it here, and don’t touch it there.
Don’t touch it, in fact, anywhere―
Let it dangle and hold us hard, let it flash and swing.
―from “Scar Tissue”

Over the course of his work―more than twenty books in total―Charles Wright has built “one of the truly distinctive bodies of poetry created in the second half of the twentieth century” (David Young, Contemporary Poets ). Oblivion Banjo , a capacious new selection spanning his decades-long career, showcases the central themes of Wright’s poetry: “language, landscape, and the idea of God.” No matter the precise subject of each poem, on display here is a vast and rich interior life, a mind wrestling with the tenuous relationship between the ways we describe the world and its reality.

The recipient of almost every honor in poetry―the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize, to name a few―and a former poet laureate of the United States, Wright is an essential voice in American letters. Oblivion Banjo is the perfect distillation of his inimitable career―for devout fans and newcomers alike.

Genres: Poetry, Contemporary

784 pages, Hardcover

Published November 5, 2019

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

[David Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would be a noble goal to develop an inner life as rich and curious as Wright's. Most poems are simply him sitting on his back porch, watching the sun set across the mountains. Only this, described again and again beautifully, each time fully unique, but so much more as his mind picks away at his cardinal topics of landscape, language, and God. Across these three structures Wright weaves his inner world in endless reflection. Maybe the world really is all inside.

This book has permanent residence on my nightstand. I read a couple of poems most nights before bed, and I'm only half way through the collection. So now, five stars, of course, and removal from my Currently Reading list. I'll always be reading it anyways, returning to it like a back porch draped in an Appalachian sunset, each time discovering something new.

[Hank]

Read this before bed throughout this pandemic year. Wright's language brought me an immeasurable amount of joy and comfort. Here's Dan Chiasson writing about his prolific output: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

[Alfonsas Andriuškevičius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dar vienas mano favoritas amerikonas. Irgi melancholiškas. Čia tai bent rinktinė: 754 puslapiai! Ją turiu nuo 2020 (vėl - dėkui Žilvinui K.). Iki tol skaitinėjau gerokai kuklesnę. Daug, daug gamtos (kartais ji "nutapyta" neįtikėtinai lakoniškai - vienu brūkštelėjimu: "The line between heaven and earth is a grass blade, a light green and hard to walk.") Ir ji (gamta) - bemaž epifaniška, joje pulsuoja transcendencija. Todėl W. gamtos reiškiniai ir bauginantys, slėpiningi, ir sykiu - guodžiantys (net turint galvoje galutinio susiliejimo su jais variantą): "The shadows of the floating world huddle beneath their objects. / Slowly, like hands on a massive clock, / They soon will begin their crawl and creep to bring us back / Tick-tock in their black sack, tick-tock in their soft black sack." W. - bene pats meditatyviausias poetas iš mano skaitytųjų. Be to, bičiuliaujasi su senovės kinais. Yra eilių, parašytų tiesiog kiniška maniera: "A water egret planes down like a page of blank paper / Toward the edge of the noon sky. Let me, like him, find an island of white reeds / To settle down on, under the wind, forgetting words." Kaip sako vienas kritikas, "almost nothing ever happens in a Charles Wright poem". Bet... Čia kartais lėtai, tačiau įspūdingai veikia dangaus kūnai. Ir dar: jie (tie dangaus kūnai) susiduria su žinomais kultūros reiškiniais. Štai puikus šešiaeilis (esu keletą jų išvertęs): "Half-moon rising, thin as a contact lens. The sun going down / As effortlessly as a body through deep water, / Both at the same time, simple pleasures / As autumn begins to rustle and rinse, as autumn begins to prink. // And now the clouds come on, the same clouds that Turner saw. / Half of the moon sees them, half does not." Žodžiu: rekomenduoju melancholiškiesiems, linkusiems į meditaciją (plačia šio žodžio prasme), geidžiantiesiems gelmės.

[Frank Hoppe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Returned to library at about page 100. I liked a lot of it, but I have to work up to that much poetry in one fell swoop. I'm not so adept at discerning poetic forms and meters, so I focus on a couple of other things instead. First, tracking down allusions I recognize as allusions. My poetic depth of knowledge is slim enough that I recognize the vast bulk of these just slide on by me. Second, discovering the meanings of words I don't recognize. These two goals boil down to trying to "get" any jokes or other gems that might otherwise be hidden from me. Lastly, I focus on luxuriating in compelling bits as they strike both my eye and ear. At this point in my poetic self education, that's enough.

[Evan]

"So many have come and gone, undone
like a rhinestone cowboy,
Dazzle and snuff, Lord, dazzle and snuff,
In a two-bit rodeo.

The entrance to hell is just a tiny hole in the ground,
The size of an old pecan, soul-sized, horizon-sized.
Thousands go through it each day before the mist clears
thousands one by one you're next."

[Brian Beatty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the lines got a little long for my tastes, but the quality of observation and the control of language consistently amazed.

[Rosa]

“An Old-Fashioned Favorite Dessert Recipe.”