Yet
another contemplation of poetry by a former American Poet
Lauriat. Charles Wright, born
in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee in 1935 rose from those rustic
roots to becoming a prolific and highly regarded poet. He absorbed Southern literature, especially
William Faulkner, as a youth.
After graduation from Davidson College in 1957, he began
writing poetry influenced by Dante while serving in Army Intelligence
in Italy.
Wright’s
interests and style evolved several times over his long career
which included 31 collections.
Along the way he won the National Book Award in 1983 for Country
Music: Selected Early Poems, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
from the Academy of American Poets for the collection Chickamauga,
the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac, the Ruth
Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. He served as Poet Lauriat from 2014 to 2015.
Today’s
selection is a mid-career work from Appalachia, the last
of his Tennessee roots trilogy published in 1998.
Ars
Poetica II
I find, after all these years, I am a believer—a
I believe what the thunder and lightning have to say;
I believe that dreams are real,
and
that death has two reprisals;
I believe that dead leaves and black water fill my heart.
I shall die like a cloud, beautiful, white, full of nothingness.
The night sky is an ideogram,
a
code card punched with holes.
It thinks it’s the word of what’s-to-come.
It thinks this, but it’s only The Library of Last Resort,
The reflected light of The Great Misunderstanding.
God is the fire my feet are held to.
—Charles Wright
Ars Poetica II by Charles Wright from Appalachia.
© Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
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