Review by Booklist Review
Wright, recipient of numerous prestigious literary prizes, is a philosopher-poet with a gift for gloriously whimsical imagery and a keen sense of the ephemeral. His inquisitive poems reside at the crux of faith and art: the realization that no matter how sincerely one prays, or how devotedly one writes, the universe and the divine force that animates it remain out of reach of language, reason, and imagination. The landscapes we hold dear are indifferent to our existence, and we're on our own when it comes to figuring out how to discern the sacred in the ordinary. "We haven't a clue as to what counts," he muses, then, in bright leaping lines reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a kindred spirit also enthralled by nature yet keenly aware of our isolation from it, Wright tries to connect with the spiritual by conjuring the ancient beaming of stars, winter's starkness, and the valor of flowers. Finally, in sweet, bemused surrender, he acknowledges both the impossibility of certainty, and our insatiable hunger for it. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Last year, Wright won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Black Zodiac (LJ 4/15/97). His new work wasn't quite so lucky, but it did live up to expectations. In language that can be at once meditative and wickedly inventive, Wright explores the surreal landscape he's been mapping throughout his career in new and exciting ways. (LJ 10/1/98) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The latest volume by the much-celebrated University of Virginia professor is the third part of Wright's third trilogy, begun with the recent Chickamauga and Black Zodiac, for which he won last year's Pulitzer Prize--and though it stands alone, this characteristic book links with the others thematically, and stylistically, as much as you can call Wright's prose phrasings a style. If not much happens musically in his watered-down Poundian collages, he does play to academic critics with his oft-stated concerns: landscape, God, and language, though he seems to have little faith in any of these. He worries about an afterlife with a dead God; finds language ""our common enemy""; and is always seeking a ""secret landscape behind the landscape."" Many of his poems have a where and when (i.e., a place and a month), and find their way to a gee-whiz insight, a sententious pearl that's often borrowed from his readings in Asian poetry or European lite philosophers. After all these years, we come closer to Wright's simple aesthetic, but it's not in ""Ars Poetic II,"" where he affirms his belief in a God who holds his feet to the fire. Rather, it's in the poem ""What Do You Write About, Where Do Your Ideas Come From,"" which simply repeats his trio of subjects and adds, in Wright's faux modest style: ""The Big Empty is also a subject of note."" Wright continually fails to distance himself from his trite thoughts and phrases (""keep on keeping on,"" ""cut us some slack,"" and the entire ""After Reading Robert Graves, I Go Outside to Get My Head Together""). Another poet prominent for having endured more than anything else. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
