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Zone Journals
Charles Wright called his seventh collection Zone Journals to emphasize how the poems draw on time and place as their starting point. But despite the air of immediacy and informality, they are artfully composed, informed as always by Wright's profound sense of subliminal order.
- GenresPoetry
98 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
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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 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 19, 2007
I don't typically read that much poetry, but Charles Wright is one that's stuck with me. All his books are beautiful and compelling; this one really impacted me more than the others. His poetry is abstract, spiritual, and engaged with nature. Reading his words feels like effortless meditation, and there's much wisdom in his insight, observation, & feeling.
Here's one of many amazing passages in the book:
"Inside the self is another self like a black hole / Constantly dying, pulling parts of our lives / Always into its fluttering light, / anxious as Augustine / For redemption and explanation: / No birds hang in its painted and polished skies, no trees / Mark and exclaim its hill lines, / no grass moves, no water: / Like souls looking for bodies after some Last Judgment, / Forgotten incidents rise / from under the stone slabs / Into its waxed air; / Grief sits like a toad with its cheeks puffed, / Immovable, motionless, its tongue like a trick whip / Picking our sorrows off, our days and our happiness; / Despair, with its three mouths full, / Dangles our good occasions, such as they are, in its gray hands, / Feeding them in, / medieval and naked in their ecstasy; / And Death, a tiny o of blackness, / Waits like an eye for us to fall through its retina, / A minor irritation, / so it can blink us back."
Wow! And Wright continues with equal intensity on every page of the book. I recommend all books by Charles Wright.
Here's one of many amazing passages in the book:
"Inside the self is another self like a black hole / Constantly dying, pulling parts of our lives / Always into its fluttering light, / anxious as Augustine / For redemption and explanation: / No birds hang in its painted and polished skies, no trees / Mark and exclaim its hill lines, / no grass moves, no water: / Like souls looking for bodies after some Last Judgment, / Forgotten incidents rise / from under the stone slabs / Into its waxed air; / Grief sits like a toad with its cheeks puffed, / Immovable, motionless, its tongue like a trick whip / Picking our sorrows off, our days and our happiness; / Despair, with its three mouths full, / Dangles our good occasions, such as they are, in its gray hands, / Feeding them in, / medieval and naked in their ecstasy; / And Death, a tiny o of blackness, / Waits like an eye for us to fall through its retina, / A minor irritation, / so it can blink us back."
Wow! And Wright continues with equal intensity on every page of the book. I recommend all books by Charles Wright.
August 9, 2011
Kept this by my bedside for about a year, thumbing through it regularly . Love it. Will read it many more times.
Aug. '11: Gave this collection my first single-sitting reading today and love it even more. Here, Wright sits with his ear pressed to the heart of the world waiting for cryptic messages he knows he will never fully understand. Most of the poems here--especially the long-form "Journal of the Year of the Ox"--feel quilted, with weighty aphorisms stitched beside casual remembrances and endless (he might say failed) attempts to properly present the wonder of a tree or a cloud. Rather than poems bound thematically, they become something like "Thoughts I Had In a Particular Place" or "Thoughts I Had During an Unseasonably Warm October (Dated)". and as such we stumble through ideas with him, walking the steps toward the idea rather than simply being presented with the idea: you are privy to the process not the product. And it never hurts when your Virgil (this thing is riddled with Dante allusions) says things like this:
--Our words, like blown kisses, are swallowed by ghosts
Along the way,
their destinations bereft
In a rub of brightness unending
Aug. '11: Gave this collection my first single-sitting reading today and love it even more. Here, Wright sits with his ear pressed to the heart of the world waiting for cryptic messages he knows he will never fully understand. Most of the poems here--especially the long-form "Journal of the Year of the Ox"--feel quilted, with weighty aphorisms stitched beside casual remembrances and endless (he might say failed) attempts to properly present the wonder of a tree or a cloud. Rather than poems bound thematically, they become something like "Thoughts I Had In a Particular Place" or "Thoughts I Had During an Unseasonably Warm October (Dated)". and as such we stumble through ideas with him, walking the steps toward the idea rather than simply being presented with the idea: you are privy to the process not the product. And it never hurts when your Virgil (this thing is riddled with Dante allusions) says things like this:
--Our words, like blown kisses, are swallowed by ghosts
Along the way,
their destinations bereft
In a rub of brightness unending
July 21, 2013
Thank God for Charles Wright. I know of few poets who can translate contemplative solitude into astounding verse in the ways he does. This is a book to be read and re-read and stay around a long while...
"And Death, a tiny o of blackness/
Waits like an eye for us to fall through its retina...."
"What makes us leave what we love best?//
What is inside us that keeps erasing itself/
When we need it most...."
"And Death, a tiny o of blackness/
Waits like an eye for us to fall through its retina...."
"What makes us leave what we love best?//
What is inside us that keeps erasing itself/
When we need it most...."
July 28, 2012
Perhaps Wright's best, standing up as a single book even against full Collected editions of his poetry.
April 28, 2013
Charles Wright's poems are divine. That is all.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews