Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wright, Charles (Vol. 146) - William Logan (review date 10 January 1999)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

William Logan (review date 10 January 1999)

SOURCE: “Poetry,” in Washington Post Book World, January 10, 1999, p. 11.

[In the following review, Logan offers an unfavorable assessment of Appalachia.]

Charles Wright's rangy metaphysical poetry has the half-drowsy voice of exhaustion. The poems of Appalachia may start in the harshly gorgeous landscapes of Virginia, but soon they're dreaming of God and “would-be-saints” and “angel's wings.” An American metaphysics may seem a contradiction in terms, so given is our culture to the cruelty of excess or the cruelty of money. Our homegrown poet-philosophers have tended to be crackpots like Whitman and Pound—geniuses of the soil, and like Antaeus helpless when they lost touch with the soil.

Wright's early poems still had dirt under their thumbnails. He was born in back-country Tennessee and couldn't let the reader forget it; worse, he couldn't let himself forget it (when...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

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