52 Poetry for Students

line must be strong all the way through and not fin-

ish in a dying fall.” Wright resorts to art terms of-

ten in his discourse on poetry, from calling his col-

lections “triptychs” to talking about the “paint” and

the “color” of words. Keeping the poet’s philoso-

phy about language and lines in mind, we can see

how “Black Zodiac” came to be filled with such

colorful imagery and word-paint, and with lines

that remain “active” to their very ends.

Historical Context.

Since 1983, Charles Wright has lived and taught in

Charlottesville, Virginia. While he spent several

years in both Europe and California, his roots are

in the American South, and that is where he has re-

turned. Some of his earlier poetry was obviously

influenced by his visits to Italy (and Ezra Pound),

but even while there on military assignment, most

of his writing focused on the lush Verona landscape

and on the poet’s own contemplation about life,

death, and God, not war, the human condition,

poverty, and other topical issues. “Black Zodiac”

could have been written in any time period and in

any back yard. Because Wright does not generally

call attention to social or political events, human

rights issues, or “causes” throughout the world, it

is difficult to pin down an exact historical or cul-

tural perspective on his work. Even though he

writes exhaustingly about nature, we cannot call

him an “environmental” poet because social re-

sponsibility, economics, and politics do not come

into play. What we can say is that this poet puts

more creative effort into the metaphysical than the

cultural and deals with history more in the personal

sense than the universal, concentrating on the in-

evitability of memory and our distortions of it. The

influence of growing up in the South is evident in

his allusions to the past and its powers, but he

avoids direct references to specific historical oc-

currences. Rather, he abstractly asks, “Why do the

great stories always exist in the past?” This line,

however, is more a comment on the tricks that

memory plays instead of an observation on any par-

ticular “great” story.

In his article “Between Soil and Stars,” teacher

and critic James Longenbach states that, “by his

own admission, Wright has focused on three sub-

jects for the last thirty years: language, landscape,

and the idea of God. Black Zodiacis the synthesis

of Wright’s contrary drives toward waywardness

and compression, the soil and the stars.” This ten-

dency toward “waywardness and compression”—

Black Zodiac

Compare

&

Contrast

• 1993:In Waco, Texas, the United States Bureau
  of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fire Arms raided the
  compound of the Branch Davidians religious
  cult under charges of child abuse and other law
  violations. Eighty cult members died when the
  compound went up in flames.
  1996:An Israeli Internet access company began
  delivering e-mailed messages to God to
  Jerusalem’s Western Wall for people who can-
  not get there in person. The messages are printed
  out and stuffed into cracks in the wall.
  1996:The Oakland, California, school system
  voted unanimously to recognize “Ebonics” as
  the primary language of its African American

students. The decision brought fierce protests

from both black and white communities and the

government denied federal funding for teaching

the new “language.”

1998: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope re-

vealed a glimpse of previously unseen galaxies

12 billion light years away. The “Deep Field

South” image is a long-exposure view of the

constellation Tucana, visible only from the

Southern Hemisphere.

1999:President Bill Clinton made a stop in Haz-

ard, Kentucky, on a four-day tour aimed at

bringing business to the poorer regions of Ap-

palachia.