CHARLES WRIGHT IN THE NEW YORKER

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JUNE 12, 2014
POSTED BY PAUL MULDOON


CharlesWright

We’re delighted by the appointment of Charles Wright as poet laureate. Wright has had a long association with the magazine, and we’ve been proud to publish many of his poems in our pages. It’s no accident that the name Wright means a craftsman or an artisan, particularly a worker in wood, and Charles Wright has shown himself to be a first-rate laborer. Not that there’s anything in the least labored or laborious about what he does; rather, Charles Wright has the ability to reinvent the wheel and set it spinning. In “Sunlight Bets on the Come,” published in the magazine in 2007, he writes:

The basic pleasures remain unchanged,
and their minor satisfactions—
Chopping wood, building a fire,
Watching the elk herd
splinter and cruise around the outcrop of spruce trees
As the deer haul ass,
their white flags like synchronized swimmers’ hands,
Sunlight sealing—stretched like Saran wrap—
The world as we know it,
keeping it fresh-flamed should tomorrow arrive.
Here is a selection of Wright’s poems from our archive:

“Depression Before the Solstice,” June 21, 1976 (subscribers only).

“Homage to Paul Cézanne,” December 19, 1977 (subscribers only).

“A Journal of Southern Rivers,” July 4, 1988 (subscribers only).

“Via Negativa,” October 15, 2001 (subscribers only).

“A Short History of My Life,” January 26, 2004 (subscribers only).

“Littlefoot, 32,” February 19, 2007.

“Littlefoot, 14,” May 7, 2007.

“The Evening Is Tranquil, and Dawn Is a Thousand Miles Away,” June 30, 2008.

Photograph by Holly Wright.

From: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/06/minitrue-can-massacre-city-cant-say-word/