Charles Wright Photo by Michelle Cuevas
Charles Wright wrote his newest book, Sestets, in the after-dinner hour as the light drained from the pine trees, the pond where the herons fish and the sky over Montana. He wrote his collection of six-line poems in longhand in his cabin over the summer months—the evenings growing shorter by September. “The poems tend to have a dark overtone to them, because it kept getting darker and darker the farther down I’d get on the page,” says Wright. Dusk and diminuendo figure prominently in Wright’s meditations on the landscape, on mortality and on the use of language to reproduce an irreproducible world.
Charles Wright has been extolled as one of the best poets of his generation, a quintessential Southerner and a philosopher-poet. He’s received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize, and has taught poetry at U.Va. since 1983.
The last lines of the poem “The Ghost of Walter Benjamin Walks at Midnight” read:
If tree is tree in English, and albero in Italian,
That’s as close as we can come
To divinity, the language that circles the earth and which we’ll never speak.
Wright explores the problematic yet magical relationship between words and the corporal things to which they refer. “There’s a disconnect between us, the landscape and what’s behind it,” he says. “That will always be there. I don’t think the world is made of language; it is composed of things, which exude an aura of language like mist.” The poet’s occupation is to navigate that mist.
When pressed to talk about his work, Wright humbly demurs. “I used to talk about my poems a lot when I didn’t know what I was doing,” says Wright. “And now that I know that I will never know what I’m doing, I find it very difficult to talk about them, to make up stuff about them. They are what they are.”
A selection of poems from Sestets read by Charles Wright
Homage to What’s-His-Name
Time Is a Dark Clock, but It Still Strikes from Time to Time
The Ghost of Walter Benjamin Walks at Midnight
Recorded by Jesse Dukes. Courtesy of the Virginia Quarterly Review.
Comments
I am a struggling poet, not a student with Uva, and not recognized as of yet either. I am old… However, I am curious about the sestets…is this style of poetry a poem written in its entirety in six lines, or in six line segments? Nonetheless, I enjoyed the snipets and found them earthy, and real. I loved “Time is a dark clock” “Your feet like wind”...wow…the past is so dark that one needs a flashlight to find it.
Thank you…for sharing this amazing work.
A sestet is a poem or stanza of six lines. The term is sometimes used more specifically to refer to the last six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.
All the poems in Charles Wright’s recent book have six lines, though, as you likely intuited from the recordings, the lines are long.
I’m so glad you enjoyed the poems.
‘God only cares if you write well’
Dear Mr. Wright,
Your poetry is at the heart of a recent dream ( I’m entitling All In The Family Dream) I had. The other main character in the dream is my maternal cousin
Mr. Bradford Brown. Brad is my oldest cousin and has spent most of his working life as an insurance executive/agent. Like so many of my recent dreams I believe it is attempting (repeatedly) in every way imaginable to bring together my creative and practical skills.
Mr. Wright is a more “professional” (or academic) writer? Mr. Wright is/or was a professor of English at University of Virginia? But I’m not sure since I’ve never seriously read his work. Maybe this is illustrated ( in the dream) by my repeated attempts to find Charles book of poems?
Dr. Jung was a medical doctor ( practical) and artist/shaman (creative). His Red Book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(Jung) ( recently released by his family) both illustrates and describes his descent into the unconscious and his break from Freud ( the old school).
Obviously Mr. Charles Wright must be more than a passing significance to my unconscious? Though I was completely unaware of this reality until I dreamt it. Charles could be a symbol for the emerging Self ( as Jung would say) ? Maybe similar to the “Self” which witnesses your landscape poems?
Charles I hope you enjoy this dream plus another dream which I’ve turned into a poem ( something I frequently do). For your enjoyment I have also included two other poems heavily laden with Western land and dreamscape’s.
P.S. I’m taking the time to read more of your poems ( I have several books and http://www.poets.org ) and enjoying them.
Jeff
Dream (1)
All In The Family Dream
My Mom ( b. 1931) is cleaning and care taking like she did for so much of her life. She’s in good shape. Light and agile on her feet ( as in so many of my recent dreams). The phone rings it’s a call from somebody in my Mom’s family. At first I can’t make it out. It’s Brad Brown. My Mom says: ” Well Hello”. She’s very pleased to hear from Brad Brown.
My Mom is listening to Brad and I’m wondering if my she can cognitively manage the call ( my Mom had Dementia with Lewy Bodies for the last 7 years of her life). So I get on the other line in order to assist my Mom with the call ( something I did many times with my Mom and Bette and others). I took care of my Mom for five years (04 through 09).
I say to Brad, my Mom is doing very well, scurrying around, picking up after others, helping with cooking, playing with young and old kids. My Dad is sitting in a chair reading the paper, a bit stoic but fairly content. Reed ( my Brother) is there.
We are a family living in a modest apartment. Then Brad comes to our door. We are surprised and very pleased to see him. He’s visiting some of his other family nearby and decided to come by and see us. He talks about this and that. He is happy. He shows us a book of illustrations. Maybe it’s an art book? ( the night before I’d been reading Wallace Stevens play Three Travelers Watch The Sunrise).
Stevens spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut. Ted Kooser is also vice-president of Lincoln Benefit Life, an insurance company. Kooser sardonically noted in an interview with the Washington Post that Stevens had far more time to write at work than he ever did.
Or perhaps Brad is showing us a book of illustrations of different periods in cinema. I have books all over the table ( which is true of my waking life). I want to give Brad a book of poems by Charles Wright. I’m not sure why? But I tell Brad, Charles Wright’s poems are the best.
Brad is discussing race ( in a objective nondiscriminatory context). He also touches on the subject of one of his younger step-brothers ( in Utah that happens to be Gay). He is discussing this “step-brother in an innocent way. As I perceive it .... Brad is trying to understand his own nature through the lens of the Mormon Church, past experiences and family.
As Brad is describing some or part of a play or movie, I’m preoccupied with finding the book of poems by Charles Wright. It’s a red colored book ( like the cover of Jung’s Red Book). I’m not sure why I should be so adamant about Brad reading Charles Wright’s poems (probably more important for me to revisit Wright’s poetry) ? End of Dream
Dream (2) I’m singing ( creative) and teaching ( practical) words of Steve Earle. It’s just a hunch (I’m not sure) but it could have been Ft. Worth Blues ( a song to Townes Van Zandt) .
Steve’s Songs
in a recent dream I’m singing and teaching
Steve Earle’s songs to school children
some of Steve’s songs are sacred to me
so much so that I am not ashamed
to sing and teach them
to school kids
Steve’s songs fill me with such hope and sadness
they are one of the few things that
can heal my madness
it’s also my soul’s opinion that his songs
have the capacity to heal the world’s
meaninglessness and madness
they are classless, timeless…eternal
I’d be proud to have them
sung at my funeral
so I sing and teach Steve’s songs
to grade schooler’s
so that they might bring comfort
to a new generation
2010
Jeffery J. Rahn
Cinderella Man
stand your ground or run for the hills
bills pile up as high as Everest
they never give us
no rest
but a horse inside pulls me
up a steep embankment
along the Rio Grande
this land is your land
twisters in my dreams
the lord deems me a little fellow
in the scheme of things
yet my heart’s got the guts of a mountain goat
the brute force of Boston Bruin’s
Johnny Bucyk* or a brawler
like Jimmy Braddock*
I’ve had it with my fear
It’s so clear, clearer
than ever before
one door is love
the other doesn’t matter
one man builds castles
and waterworks
another buckin broncos
bodies made of steel
JJR
2006
* 6’, 215 lbs Hockey hall of famer Johnny Bucyk was a tough battler, but rarely penalized. In 1971, he won the Lady Byng Trophy for combining a high standard of play and gentlemanly conduct.
* Jim Braddock, a Depression era boxer played by Russell Crowe in “Cinderella Man”
Great Uncle Karl ( for Catherine)
My Mom’s family made their living
in sheep, dry farming and alfalfa.
They followed Brigham Young to the Salt Lake Valley
One Great Uncle in his 70’s can’t ride anymore
but he knows everything one man
can know about horses
He takes my Mom and us kids out to his barn
and shows us one of his last
remaining horses
I’ve never met a man with horses.
I’ve only known men with
houses and cars
something about Karl is different
he is especially kind
to my Mom and
us kids
he puts a bridle on one horse
and brings it outside
the dogs go crazy
Karl shouts a few times to shoosh them away
and then feeds the horse a little hay
As my Mom talks for a while with Karl
I can tell where she gets
her Utah twang
a bell rang inside me
so that every July
in the West
I can attest to a feeling that comes over me
when I see snow capped mountains
or fields of wild flowers
I think of my Mom, Karl and her family
I see all the possibility one man can see
all the goodness in one man’s heart
I feel apart of life and the mystery
that Karl touched in his
quarter horse
Jefferey J. Rahn
2010
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