Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wright, Charles (Vol. 146) - J. D. McClatchy (essay date October-November 1999)

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J. D. McClatchy (essay date October-November 1999)

SOURCE: “Ars Longa,” in Poetry, Vol. CLXXV, No. 1, October-November, 1999, pp. 78-89.

[In the following essay, McClatchy provides an overview of Wright's artistic and thematic development from the publication of The Grave of the Right Hand through Appalachia. While offering a generally favorable assessment of Wright's poetry, McClatchy faults the retrospective arrangement of Wright's work into a unified series of trilogies.]

Some long poems are born long; some achieve length; and some have length thrust upon them. In the beginning, there was an orderly sequence to a poet's career, from the lyric to the epic, and genres were steadied by tradition. In the nineteenth century, rigid categories and definitions loosened, and every stay or knot was next undone either by modernist poets or adventuresome readers. No one reads Whitman's Leaves of Grass as the long poem...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. David St. John (review date Spring 1982)
   2. Peter Stitt (review date Spring 1982)
   3. Joel Conarroe (review date 27 June 1982)
   4. Calvin Bedient (review date Spring-Summer 1982)
   5. Steven Gould Axelrod (review date Winter 1983)
   6. Elizabeth Frank (review date 7 April 1984)
   7. Washington Post Book World (review date 20 May 1984)
   8. Peter Stitt (essay date Summer 1984)
   9. Clayton Eshleman (review date 19 August 1984)
   10. Phoebe Pettingell (review date 20 August 1984)
   11. Helen Vendler (essay date 1988)
   12. Charles Wright with J. D. McClatchy (interview date Winter 1989)
   13. Linda Gregerson (review date December 1989)
   14. Nance Van Winckel (review date Spring 1990)
   15. Calvin Bedient (review date January 1991)
   16. J. D. McClatchy (review date August 1991)
   17. Stephen Unsino (review date 25 April 1992)
   18. X. J. Kennedy (review date March 1993)
   19. Helen Vendler (review date 7 August 1995)
   20. James Longenbach (review date October 1995)
   21. David Mason (review date Spring 1996)
   22. David Baker (review date April 1996)
   23. Calvin Bedient (review date Summer 1996)
   24. William Pratt (review date Autumn 1996)
   25. Calvin Bedient (review date Winter 1997)
   26. Judith Kitchen (review date Summer 1997)
   27. Christopher R. Miller (essay date Summer 1998)
   28. David Wojahn (review date Summer-Fall 1998)
   29. Zoë Ingalls (essay date 18 September 1998)
   30. William Logan (review date 10 January 1999)
   31. Kate Daniels (review date Summer 1999)
   32. J. D. McClatchy (essay date October-November 1999)
   33. Charles Wright with Ted Genoways (interview date Spring 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright