Charles Wright’s most recent collection of poems is Bye-and-Bye (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and recently retired from the University of Virginia. Wright was named poet laureate of the United States in the summer of 2014.
Poetry
Winter 2012
Everything Passes, But Is It Time?
Sunset same color as maple tree In my neighbor's yard— Nature and nature head-butt, Golden persimmon. And if the stairs to paradise are that color, who wouldn't put his old […]
Poetry
Winter 2012
Four Dog Nights
Sunset and dying light, the robin, dark warrior, In his green domain. Beyond West Virginia, the horses are putting their night shoes on, Ready to break through. On the stones […]
Poetry
Winter 2012
The Last Word
I love to watch the swallows at sundown, swarming after invisible things to eat. Were we so lucky, A full gullet, and never having to look at what it is, […]
Poetry
Spring 2005
Scar Tissue II
Time, for us, is a straight line, on which we hang our narratives. For landscape, however, it all is a circling From season to season, the snake's tail in the […]
Poetry
Winter 2002
Miss December
First month of winter, Orion's belt at dog call stretched tight on the eastern sky, Tempus viveudi, tempus morendi, Everything laughter, everything dust. Unthinkable dust. Unthinkable. And sun in Scorpio's […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
A Bad Memory Makes You a Metaphysician, a Good One Makes You a Saint
This is our world, high privet hedge on two sides, half-circle of arborvitae, Small strip of sloped lawn, Last of the spring tulips and off-purple garlic heads Snug in the […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
Basic Dialogue
The transformation of objects in space, or objects in time, To objects outside either, but tactile, still precise … It's always the same problem— Nothing's more abstract, more unreal, than […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
Stray Paragraphs in April, Year of the Rat
Only the dead can be born again, and then not much. I wish I were a mole in the ground, eyes that see in the dark. Attentive without an object […]
Poetry
Winter 1991
Thinking of David Summers at the Beginning of Winter
December, five days till Christmas, mercury red-lined In the low twenties, glass throat Holding the afternoon half-hindered And out of luck. Good-bye to my last poem, Autumn Thoughts. Two electric […]
Poetry
Summer 1989
Sunday at Home at the Beginning of Winter
Noon in the natural world, Ascending the purgatorial stairs to the white attic, Nothing to say, Lord, nothing to say … In the awkward eddies of sunlight welled up in […]
Poetry
Summer 1989
Early One Morning in the Teatro Romano
Morning in the Teatro Romano, Verona spread like a tourist map Creased and refolded across the river, creased and refolded Under the piebald sunshade streaming down from the Dolomites.Cypress blister […]
Weekend Reads
Stray Paragraph in April,
Year of the Rat
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Spring 1997, Vol. XIX, No. 2 Only the dead can be born again, and then not much. I wish I were a mole in […]