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Country Music: Selected Early Poems
A compilation of powerful and moving poems from early in the poet's career.
Co-winner of the 1983 National Book Award for Poetry, Country Music is comprised of eighty-eight poems selected from Charles Wright's first four books published between 1970 and 1977. From his first book, The Grave of the Right Hand, to the extraordinary China Trace, this selection of early works represents "Charles Wright's grand his desire to reclaim and redeem a personal past, to make a reckoning with his present, and to conjure the terms by which we might face the future," writes David St. John in the forward. These poems, powerful and moving in their own right, lend richness and insight to Wright's recently collected later works. "In Country Music we see the same explosive imagery, the same dismantled and concentric (or parallel) narratives, the same resolutely spiritual concerns that have become so familiar to us in Wright's more recent poetry," writes St. John.
Co-winner of the 1983 National Book Award for Poetry, Country Music is comprised of eighty-eight poems selected from Charles Wright's first four books published between 1970 and 1977. From his first book, The Grave of the Right Hand, to the extraordinary China Trace, this selection of early works represents "Charles Wright's grand his desire to reclaim and redeem a personal past, to make a reckoning with his present, and to conjure the terms by which we might face the future," writes David St. John in the forward. These poems, powerful and moving in their own right, lend richness and insight to Wright's recently collected later works. "In Country Music we see the same explosive imagery, the same dismantled and concentric (or parallel) narratives, the same resolutely spiritual concerns that have become so familiar to us in Wright's more recent poetry," writes St. John.
- GenresPoetry
182 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1982
11 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Charles Wright
238 books109 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 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 25, 2020
A shift in the wind the darkness
Beading about your eyelids
The sour pull of the blood
Everything works against you
The way the evening comes down
Its trellises one rose at a time
The watery knots of light
That lap at your memory
The way you thought of your life once
An endless falling of seeds
Already places exist
Which cannot reshelter you
Hands you have clasped for the last time
Familiar mirrors remain
That will not contain your face
Words you have uttered
That will not remember your tongue
The sofas that held your sleep
Gradually rise to assume
Their untouched shapes and their dreams
Beading about your eyelids
The sour pull of the blood
Everything works against you
The way the evening comes down
Its trellises one rose at a time
The watery knots of light
That lap at your memory
The way you thought of your life once
An endless falling of seeds
Already places exist
Which cannot reshelter you
Hands you have clasped for the last time
Familiar mirrors remain
That will not contain your face
Words you have uttered
That will not remember your tongue
The sofas that held your sleep
Gradually rise to assume
Their untouched shapes and their dreams
November 29, 2023
This has a misleading subtitle; Wright's first book is represented by a selection of a handful of prose poems, but the rest of the book is an omnibus of his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th collections. After reading his Black Zodiac last year and really being taken with it I wanted to read more of his work.
I'm a little biased against prose poems. Not that I haven't read some good ones, it just seems like a strange exercise to me, and consequently the selection from his debut collection left me flat.
His second collection, Hard Freight was very good, if a little given to opaqueness.
I don't mind working for the meaning, but sometimes things seem so deliberately obscure as to make me wonder why bother? A lot of the third collection Bloodlines was particularly prone to this, though he provided a key of sorts to the sequence Tattoos. That sequence was the best thing in the first three parts of the book.
But China Trace, the closing volume, a sequence of forty odd poems that Wright intended to add up to a long poem is stellar. That's the one I'll keep coming back to. It's not easy per se, but neither is it impenetrable; a couple or three readings of each poem yield a lot. Great stuff!
I'd recommend China Trace highly, and I think this is the way it's most widely available. The rest is a mixed bag.
I'm a little biased against prose poems. Not that I haven't read some good ones, it just seems like a strange exercise to me, and consequently the selection from his debut collection left me flat.
His second collection, Hard Freight was very good, if a little given to opaqueness.
I don't mind working for the meaning, but sometimes things seem so deliberately obscure as to make me wonder why bother? A lot of the third collection Bloodlines was particularly prone to this, though he provided a key of sorts to the sequence Tattoos. That sequence was the best thing in the first three parts of the book.
But China Trace, the closing volume, a sequence of forty odd poems that Wright intended to add up to a long poem is stellar. That's the one I'll keep coming back to. It's not easy per se, but neither is it impenetrable; a couple or three readings of each poem yield a lot. Great stuff!
I'd recommend China Trace highly, and I think this is the way it's most widely available. The rest is a mixed bag.
October 11, 2014
A first-rate collection by Charles Wright. Wright's poetry is spiritual without being self-righteous or self-indulgent.
"When he lies down, the waters will lie down with him,
And all that walks and all that stands still, and sleep through the thunder."
He is true to nature's imagery but also is comfortable signifying through and by that imagery.
"Don’t wait for the snowfall from the dogwood tree.
Live like a huge rock covered with moss,
Rooted half under the earth and anxious for no one."
He is not afraid of simplicity or of eloquence:
"Home is what you lie in, or hang above, the house
Your father made, or keeps on making,
The dirt you moisten, the sap you push up and nourish"
I enjoyed living some of my days reading this collection.
"When he lies down, the waters will lie down with him,
And all that walks and all that stands still, and sleep through the thunder."
He is true to nature's imagery but also is comfortable signifying through and by that imagery.
"Don’t wait for the snowfall from the dogwood tree.
Live like a huge rock covered with moss,
Rooted half under the earth and anxious for no one."
He is not afraid of simplicity or of eloquence:
"Home is what you lie in, or hang above, the house
Your father made, or keeps on making,
The dirt you moisten, the sap you push up and nourish"
I enjoyed living some of my days reading this collection.
September 29, 2008
Reading the start of this great poets work is magnificent. Later one I think that he gets tied up in the geography of the text, so in his first few books you really do read and feel the development of a great poet.
July 27, 2007
Second to T.S. Eliot, my most read and most favorite book of poems.
February 8, 2008
Holy crap! China Trace is amazing!!!
February 14, 2009
I don't love every thing in here, but there are some pieces so exquisite and right-on it just makes me fall out of my chair. I would say mostly they're from the section of poems from 'China Trace.'
August 13, 2024
This is the way your true name
Returns and returns again,
Your sorrow becoming a foreign tongue,
Your body becoming a foreign tongue,
Blue idiom, blue embrace.
-- "The Fever Toy"
And this is where the ash falls.
And this is the time it took to get here --
And yours, too, is the stall, the wet wings
Arriving, and the beak.
And yours the thump, and the soft voice:
The octopus on the reef's edge, who slides
His fat fingers among the cracks,
Can use you. You've prayed to him,
In fact, and don't know it.
You are him, and think yourself yourself.
-- "Tattoos"
In all beauty there lies
Something inhuman, something you can't know:
In the pith and marrow of every root
Of every bloom; in the blood-seam
Of every rock; in the black lung of every cloud
The seed, the infinitesimal seed
That dooms you, that makes you nothing,
Feeds on its self-containment and grows big.
-- "Skins"
And what does it come to, Pilgrim,
This walking to and fro on the earth, knowing
That nothing changes, or everything;
And only, to tell it, these sad marks,
Phrases half-parsed, ellipses and scratches across the dirt?
It comes to a point. It comes and it goes.
-- "Skins"
I write poems to untie myself, to do penance and disappear
Through the upper right-hand corner of things, to say grace.
-- "Reunion"
Returns and returns again,
Your sorrow becoming a foreign tongue,
Your body becoming a foreign tongue,
Blue idiom, blue embrace.
-- "The Fever Toy"
A silence beneath the leaves:
The way back is always into the earth.
Hornbeam or oak root, the ditch, the glass:
It all comes to the same thing:
A length of chain, a white hand.
-- "Clinchfield Station"
And this is where the ash falls.
And this is the time it took to get here --
And yours, too, is the stall, the wet wings
Arriving, and the beak.
And yours the thump, and the soft voice:
The octopus on the reef's edge, who slides
His fat fingers among the cracks,
Can use you. You've prayed to him,
In fact, and don't know it.
You are him, and think yourself yourself.
-- "Tattoos"
I want the dirt to go loose, the east wind
To pivot and fold like a string.
I want the pencil to eat its words,
The star to be sucked through its black hole.
And everything stays the same,
Locks unpicked, shavings unswept on the stone floor.
-- "Hardin County"
In all beauty there lies
Something inhuman, something you can't know:
In the pith and marrow of every root
Of every bloom; in the blood-seam
Of every rock; in the black lung of every cloud
The seed, the infinitesimal seed
That dooms you, that makes you nothing,
Feeds on its self-containment and grows big.
-- "Skins"
And what does it come to, Pilgrim,
This walking to and fro on the earth, knowing
That nothing changes, or everything;
And only, to tell it, these sad marks,
Phrases half-parsed, ellipses and scratches across the dirt?
It comes to a point. It comes and it goes.
-- "Skins"
In some other life
I'll stand where I'm standing now, and will look down, and will see
My own face, and not know what I'm looking at.
These are the nights
When the oyster begins her pearl, when the spider slips
Through his wired rooms, and the barns cough, and the grass quails.
-- "January"
I write poems to untie myself, to do penance and disappear
Through the upper right-hand corner of things, to say grace.
-- "Reunion"
Don't wait for snowfall from the dogwood tree.
Live like a huge rock covered with moss,
Rooted half under the earth
and anxious for no one.
-"Signature"
July 30, 2020
I came to Wright late, by way of Caribou, but that spoke deeply enough to me that I decided to follow Wright through his entire career. The starting point is this collection of his first four volumes. It started slow for me, in a lyrical travel mode bearing a clear imprint of Ezra Pound--the first poem in the second volume is "Homage to Ezra Pound". For me a little of that goes a long way. When Wright turns to more biographical excavations in the third book, Bloodlines, a different voice begins to emerge. The sequences "Virgo Descending" and "Rural Route" read obscure at first, but when i came to the "notes" at the end, grounding each the images of each section in specific places, I started to feel it. The four volume, China Trace, feels fully realized; the lyrics are shorter, the emotional center less deeply buried, though sometimes elusive, which is part of the lyrical exploration. A sample from "Equation," which opens with the persona opening the phone book to "look for my adolescence":
I touch my palm. I touch it again and again.
I leave no fingerprint. I find no white scar.
It must have been something else,
Something enormous, something too big to see.
Recommended poems: "Self-Portrait in 2035," "Edvard Munch," "Equation," "April," and "Signature."
I touch my palm. I touch it again and again.
I leave no fingerprint. I find no white scar.
It must have been something else,
Something enormous, something too big to see.
Recommended poems: "Self-Portrait in 2035," "Edvard Munch," "Equation," "April," and "Signature."
May 10, 2018
The longer I read this collection, which draws from Wright's first four collections, the more I enjoyed and connected with it. This was the first poetry collection I have read and the first time reading Wright in any sustained way. I know longer remember when or where I bought this collection.
Each collection shows the language getting sparer. The lines thin and the length of individual poems rarely hit the halfway point on a page. The imagery is still dense with invented compound words and equal references to the foothills of the Smokies in Tennessee and the Alps in Northern Italy. Most of these poems feel serial, but I'm not sure what they add up to.
I don't know how often I will return to these, many times I felt I was just letting my eyes wash over the page without really knowing what I was reading, but my interest in Wright is piqued. Even if these poems failed to make strong impressions individually, Wright's style and voice is familiar (the Tennessee stuff) and unfamiliar (everything else) to a degree that I believe seeking out his later output will be rewarding. Recommended.
Each collection shows the language getting sparer. The lines thin and the length of individual poems rarely hit the halfway point on a page. The imagery is still dense with invented compound words and equal references to the foothills of the Smokies in Tennessee and the Alps in Northern Italy. Most of these poems feel serial, but I'm not sure what they add up to.
I don't know how often I will return to these, many times I felt I was just letting my eyes wash over the page without really knowing what I was reading, but my interest in Wright is piqued. Even if these poems failed to make strong impressions individually, Wright's style and voice is familiar (the Tennessee stuff) and unfamiliar (everything else) to a degree that I believe seeking out his later output will be rewarding. Recommended.
November 5, 2022
Wright's poems are astounding. Such perfect eloquence is rarified even among other great poems and poets. My only complaint is, as a poet myself, his make me feel inadequate at times since I can't come close to what he's achieved, but they also inspire me and teach me that great poetry can be, and perhaps must be, detached from concrete meaning. Instead, they're completely about the look, feel, juxtaposition, and beauty of the words—as is all poetry, I understand, but I feel like Wright takes that to a higher level.
February 7, 2019
What a great gift to poetry lovers! So many of these poems pierced my heart. Not every poem is perfect, but every poem has at least one perfect line in it and a number of the poems are full of perfect lines. I had checked out this volume from the library but I was only one-third through when I knew I had to have my own copy, so I ordered one to keep. I will re-read this volume again and again.
Read
October 22, 2019"Don't wait for the snowfall from the dogwood tree.
Live like a huge rock covered with moss,
Rooted half under the earth
and anxious for no one."
Live like a huge rock covered with moss,
Rooted half under the earth
and anxious for no one."
January 14, 2014
Some lovely moments, as I said before, but as another reviewer said, there wasn't a lot to "hold on to." Lots of pastoral imagery -- some very rich and original -- but in many cases I wasn't sure what I should be taking away from it besides the beautiful or interesting images. Nonetheless, for the most part I enjoyed it.
March 21, 2012
Good. Wright's early work is not really "my thing." However, it is fascinating to read through an author's canon to see the progression in style that occurs. Many beautiful lines but very little to hang on to.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews