46 Poetry for Students
Author Biography.
Charles Wright was born in Hardin County, Ten-
nessee, in 1935. He spent most of his childhood in
this Appalachian region, primarily in eastern Ten-
nessee and western North Carolina. After gradu-
ating from Davidson College in 1957, he served in
the army’s Intelligence Service for four years,
spending most of that time in Verona, Italy. Until
this point in his life, Wright had not written po-
etry, but in Italy he discovered Ezra Pound’s Ital-
ian Cantosand became engrossed in both reading
and writing verse. The lush natural surroundings
of Verona were a major impetus on his landscape
descriptions. Upon returning to the United States,
he attended the University of Iowa Writer’s Work-
shop, graduating with an M.F.A. degree in 1963.
Afterwards, he returned to Italy as a Fulbright
Scholar to teach at the University of Rome. Dur-
ing his stay there, he also began translating the
works of Italian poets whose style of poetry would
find its way into Wright’s own work as he crafted
his poems.
The influence of growing up in the rural South
is also evident in much of Wright’s work, espe-
cially in the typical southern concern for the past
and its power over present day life. The ideas of
irrepressible memory, a sense of fatality, and per-
sonal salvation are concepts throughout many of
his poems, including “Black Zodiac.” While the
collection Black Zodiacwas written in the 1990s—
three decades after his preliminary publications—
much of the style and themes found in this recent
book are only a continuation of those begun many
years ago in his early material. Wright attributes
his influences not only to Pound and various Ital-
ian poets, but also to his writing teachers, particu-
larly fellow poet Donald Justice. While in the
Writer’s Workshop at Iowa, Wright learned not
only the history of poetry and poetics, but also the
importance of a poem’s sound, or its “music” as
Justice noted. Wright eventually began to connect
his love of landscape with his love for language—
like Pound, Justice, and others—and, after mixing
in his own religious beliefs, doubts, and longings,
he would arrive at the three themes most prevalent
in his poetry.
Wright taught at the University of California,
Irvine, from 1966 to 1983, then moved back to the
South to take a position at the University of Vir-
ginia in Charlottesville. In 1992, Wright briefly re-
turned to Italy, serving as a distinguished visiting
professor in Florence.Black Zodiac