In the Bank of Beautiful Sins: Poems

by Robert Wrigley

Robert Wrigley writes about the richness at the margins, the way a horrible event can also contain a certain beauty. In "Majestic," he describes the spectacle of a "white Lincoln's arc/ from the crown of the downriver road/ and the splash it bellied in the water." This attention to the complexity of the moment as experienced also fuels "About Language," in which a child innocently curses as geese fly gracefully overhead. Excellent work.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Robert Wrigley is the author of seven books of poetry, including, most recently, Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems (Penguin, 2006); Lives of the Animals (Penguin, 2003), winner of the 2005 Poets Prize; and Reign of Snakes (Penguin, 1999), winner of the 2000 Kingsley Tufts Award in Poetry. His book, In the Bank of Beautiful Sins (Penguin, 1995) won the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award, and his poems have appeared in many periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, and The American Poetry Review. His poems have been reprinted twice in the Best American Poetry anthologies, and five times in the Pushcart Prize collections. Recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Idaho Commission on the Arts, Wrigley is Professor of English and teaches in the MFA Program in Writing at the University of Idaho. He lives in the woods near Moscow, Idaho, with his wife, the writer Kim Barnes. "

Reviews

[Thomas George Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Wrigley, like Abe Lincoln, did not trust organized religion. But poetry to him was like religion; and he does love faith. He writes poems that reflect human concerns and sensitivity with true experiences. Reading his poems are in no way pessimistic to the reader; at least not to me. His poems, rather, uplift the soul that life is not as horrible as it seems.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Aubade' and 'The Bramble' are two of the most beautifully written poems I have ever read. I love words, and when someone can put together different words to create a visceral experience, that is pure wonder.

[Kitty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book so I wouldn't forget the cover. I tried to memorize the poem "Benton's Persephone" enthralled by the music, the twists of image, the pinning still of a moment that trembles close to enactment. The whole poem trembles! However, poem after poem is worthy of such effort. The entire collection is reminiscent of Baudelaire's "Fleurs du Mal" , where beauty and love pull uneasily at sin in modern American landscape: the IGA store girl whose story might be sung in a blues song; making a paper airplane out of an image of a beautiful model; family secrets where we feel included in the kitchen; childhood memories, the natural world. An invitation to explore the moral shades of desire, dark and light; familiar and strange; I and You, old and new.

[Barbara Precht · Rating 5 out of 5]

He may have been raised in the Midwest, but his adult life found him in the Northwest, specifically in ID on the Clearwater River. Robert Wrigley has been a poet in residence at Lewis-Clark State College and frequently has been a reader of poetry at gatherings of writers, teachers, and other poets. This collection captures moments of our everyday lives in language rich with pictures. He awakens the seasons of our years.

[Dan Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can read "Angels" over and over again and fall in love with it again after every reading.

[Megan Dodd · Rating 5 out of 5]

The bird imagery is really quite neat.