A Short History of the Shadow: Poems
About this book
Luminous new poems from one who "has long been a poet of gorgeous description" ―William Logan, The New CriterionLandscape, as Wang Wei says, softens the sharp edges of isolation.Don't just do something, sit there.And so I have, so I have,the seasons curling around me like smoke,Gone to the end of the earth and back without a sound. ―from "Body and Soul II"This is Charles Wright's first collection of verse since the gathering, in Negative Blue , of his "Appalachian Book of the Dead," a trilogy of trilogies hailed "among the great long poems of the century" (James Longenbach, Boston Review ). In A Short History of the Shadow , Wright's return to the landscapes of his early work finds his art resilient in a world haunted by death and the dead.