Charles Wright Poem and Interview



Charles Wright showed up on my reading radar only four or five years ago.

Since then I have sometimes wondered why I persist in reading anyone else.

His publisher in the States is Farrar, and as far as I know, only Stride has published his work over here. Laudable though that is, the Stride books are of poor quality and scattered with misprints - particularly damaging to a poet like Wright who uses the line so creatively.

Wouldn't it be good if Bloodaxe furthered there reputation for bringing eminent U.S. poets to these shores by publishing a nice big selected? Or is that more up Carcanet's street?

Anyway, here's a short one I pulled off the net.

Clear Night

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.


I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.


And the wind says “What?” to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.


Charles Wright, “Clear Night” from Country Music: Selected Early Poems. Copyright © 1982 by Charles Wright. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.

Source: Country Music: Selected Early Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1982)

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