Black Zodiac
Many readers find Charles Wright’s poetry diffi-
cult to understand or even inaccessible. Readers of-
ten assume that Wright’s work is going to tell a
story or be a neat, precise account that makes sense.
This poet’s work is, instead, like a loosely woven
rug with threads of images, ideas, and descriptions
winding in and out of one another, sometimes cor-
relating, sometimes not. “Black Zodiac” is a typi-
cal meandering poem full of stark imagery and
common themes that appear in the majority of
Wright’s poetry. A poem in the follow-up collec-
tion to Black Zodiac, Appalachia,illustrates what
Wright’s poems are usually about.
In “What Do You Write About, Where Do
Your Ideas Come From?” the first two lines of the
poem answer the questions: “Landscape, of course,
the idea of God and language / itself, that pure
grace.” Indeed, these are the principles addressed
in “Black Zodiac” “landscape, God (and death),
and language” with each one standing alone as a
theme, but also blending into one another, creating
a mesh of nature, religious thought, and the ability
to express ourselves. While it would be mislead-
ing, as well as futile, to analyze “Black Zodiac” in
terms of what it tells us from beginning to end we
can examine it in light of its pieces; the glimpses
of lucid description and the obscure strings of im-
ages and broken thoughts. What this poem is about,
then, is one man’s attempt to express what he es-
sentially feels is inexpressible and to describe that
attempt through discourse on landscape, God, and
language itself.
Charles Wright
1997
Volume 10 45