The thread that dangles us
between a dark and a darker dark,
Is luminous, sure, but smooth sided.
Don't touch it here, and don't touch it there.
Don't touch it, in fact, anywhere-
Let it dangle and hold us hard, let it flash and swing.
-from "Scar Tissue"
Over the course of his work-more than twenty books in total-Charles Wright has built "one of the truly distinctive bodies of poetry created in the second half of the twentieth century" (David Young, Contemporary Poets). Oblivion Banjo, a capacious new selection spanning his decades-long career, showcases the central themes of Wright's poetry: "language, landscape, and the idea of God." No matter the precise subject of each poem, on display here is a vast and rich interior life, a mind wrestling with the tenuous relationship between the ways we describe the world and its reality.
The recipient of almost every honor in poetry-the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize, to name a few-and a former poet laureate of the United States, Wright is an essential voice in American letters. Oblivion Banjo is the perfect distillation of his inimitable career-for devout fans and newcomers alike.
- ISBN10 0374251010
- ISBN13 9780374251017
- Publish Date 5 November 2019
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 29 April 2023
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 784
- Language English