Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wright, Charles (Vol. 146) - Zoë Ingalls (essay date 18 September 1998)

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Zoë Ingalls (essay date 18 September 1998)

SOURCE: “Charles Wright, Poet of Landscape, Melds Tradition and Innovation,” in Chronicle of Higher Education, September 18, 1998, pp. B10-11.

[In the following essay, Ingalls presents an overview of Wright's formative experiences, his poetry and artistic concerns, and critical reception.]

In the beginning, Charles Wright didn't know he wanted to write poetry.

“It sort of came like a thunderbolt out of the blue,” he says.

The year was 1959, and he was 23, newly arrived in Verona: Italy, as a member of the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. He had read some fiction and a little T. S. Eliot as an undergraduate at Davidson College, but no poetry to speak of—no poetry that spoke to him.

He had picked up a copy of Ezra Pound's Cantos in the airport in New York, and had taken it along with him on a sightseeing trip to Sirmione, a town on the tip of a finger of...

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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