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Title: Black Zodiac by Charles Wright ISBN: 0-374-52536-6 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.44 (9 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Yet I wonder about the direction of American Poetry
Comment: I'm probably not going to win many friends with this, and since I don't realy believe in writting bad reviews anyhow, I might pull it later, but I feel that some important questions need to be asked, about modern poetry, and the direction books like Black Zodiac are taking us. Once I find those answers one way or another, that will be that, and my concerns will be satiated.
1. Is there a difference between name-checking new-age concepts in your poetry and truly understanding them? The perfect example of this is the fact that the piece of calligraphy on the cover, by a Chinese monk called Hui Su, is printed upside down. For me, this realy blows the credibility of any 'influence' that Wright can claim to draw from China.
He repeatedly talks as if he thinks so deeply about these concepts from Asia, but he's realy looking for an exotic image, and a pretty picture. Like whoever designed his cover, he knows just enough about Asia to be dangerous. He can name the great notions of Asian though, but he doesn't even understand them enough to know top from bottom. Instead of a true insight into these issues, he's just using the old orientalist ploy of "The Mystic East." This just goes to show that the thoughts of Edward Said will be practical long after his death, and long after Charles Wright is swallowed up by the mediocrity that obscures many American poets of moderate skill after their 15 minutes of fame.
2. Is superficiality really enough to make a poet? I don't doubt that Wright's heart and mind are in the right place, he's asking the right questions, looking at the right things, but in the end, he doesn't bother to let them penetrate down deep into his poems. Like the calligraphy on the cover, they're just window dressing. It doesn't seem genuine, and so it comes accross like some teenager trying to sound grown up and intellectual by name dropping all to eagerly a few names here and there without realy comprehending the depth that drove these names to greatness.
It is like a painter who coppies a master: his work will always be distorted because he can only see what is on the surface, the final product, not the genius, the vision, the understanding of unified principles that allowed the master to create from nothing.
3. So what is the condition of American poetry? Some people would say this superficiality is typical of American culture, but I don't believe it. The fact that he won the Pulitzer for this book may argue against me, but I think America has more depth than that. After all, look at what great poets America has produced: Gary Snyder, Frank O'Hara, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, the Harlem Rennaisance, and most obviously, Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost. Even though I don't even like all these poets, they are all deep, thoughtfull, mature poets, who pass up the cheap flashy tricks of mediocre poets in favor of deeper, more subdued verse.
What is more, many of the great writters of Europe have found their first markets in America while their home countries rejected them. America knows good books from bad, good poets from the mediocre ones, we just have come to not expect greatness from contemporary American writers. That is the real shame.
And what is worse, those who do look for greatness in American writers, like the Pulitzer comittee, tend to find it anywhere and everywhere. To be honest, I wouldn't say that Wright is a bad poet, just a mediocre one. Who could envision his name engraved in the anals of literary history even 50 years from now? Heck, who outside of poetry nuts even knows who he is? This, I think, is not due to any enate weakness as a writer on his part, but due to the fact that he doesn't seem to take serriously the ideas of contemplation and understanding that he talks so much about.
To be honest, I have the same criticizms of Jorrie Grahm, another Pulitzer Winner. Just because she doesn't capitalize her sentances or use conventional line breaks doesn't make here a great poet.
If I could sit down and talk with Charles Wright, I'm sure I would change my mind. I think he is a person who can intuit what is beautifull and intruiging in the world, but I just feel that it needs to develop more than it has in Black Zodiac. Untill I can ask my questions to him, and hear his answers, I'll reserve a recomendation of this book.
Rating: 3
Summary: topsy turvy
Comment: The cover of this book reproduces a masterpiece of Chinese calligraphy -- upside down. I once wrote to the publisher asking why they didn't turn it right-side up, but they never responded. I wonder if they did that intentionally, or through ignorance. That would be like printing a page from the Book of Kells upside down.
Rating: 5
Summary: & wholly modern
Comment: This book is a beautifully eloquent, quiet meditation on so many mysteries & philosophies, influenced by both western & eastern canons.
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Title: Blizzard of One: Poems by Mark Strand ISBN: 0375701370 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: 08 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Quarter Notes : Improvisations and Interviews (Poets on Poetry) by Charles Wright ISBN: 0472066048 Publisher: UMP Pub. Date: 01 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990 by Charles Wright ISBN: 0374523266 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems by Charles Wright ISBN: 0374527733 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Practical Gods (Penguin Poets) by Carl Dennis ISBN: 0141002301 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 09 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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