“The Year of Turning Seventy,” Lorne Mook weighs the fragments of Charles Wright
by Ernie on 11/09/07 at 9:53 am
In the current issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, Lorne Mook reviews a new collection from Charles Wright. Lorne Mook is the author of the collection Travelers Without Maps (2002) as well as translations of Rainer Maria Rilke and scholarly essays on Wordsworth and Joyce. Here is an excerpt from his review:
“Those who know Charles Wright’s career know the story. While in the Army, in Italy, in the spring of 1959, Wright went to the shore of Lake Garda and read ‘Blandula, Tenulla, Vagula’ near the spot where Ezra Pound had composed it, discovering-for the first time, at age 23-poetry propelled not by narrative but by association, the kind of poetry he was meant to create. Ten years later, Pound published the last section of his Cantos where, in Canto CXVI, he wondered if this poem that had occupied him for decades cohered. A year after that, in 1970, Wright published his first book; and since then, his poetry, whose split-level lines and free-verse music owe much to Pound’s influence, has prompted similar wondering-for Wright is fond of bringing together individual poems in larger and larger groups.”
You may read the review for free in the new issue: www.cprw.com
