Often exhilarating but at times exasperatingly abstruse, Wright’s second book this year (Music’s Mask and Measure
appeared earlier) exhibits a free-flowing, semi-improvisational energy focused and intensified by carefully constructed lines and stanzas. Whether scaling to Parnassian heights (“I am one of those who feels/ an unsuspected subversion, and go/ caroling my rude ambition/ among the stars”) or plunging inward to insight (“I know strife as the foundation of becoming,/ and melancholy as the soul’s creative impulse”), the poems’ impeccable musicality and craftsmanship will win the trust and admiration of many. When Wright ventures deepest into his cosmological lather, however, even the most intrepid hermeneut will be left head-scratching: “We have found/ the dark nebula; we will speak/ the Jewel Box,/ or the Almond.” Like much of Wright’s work, these poems draw heavily on the creation myths of the Dogon people of Mali, West Africa, but in their great commodiousness they find room for passages of French, Italian and Spanish, as well as references to figures as diverse as Parmenides, Egyptian-Jewish writer Edmond Jabès, and jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Richly celebrated by the academy, Wright still deserves a broader readership.
