Oblivion Banjo: The Poetry of Charles Wright by Charles Wright

Yes, 754 pages, not a misprint. Back in my July, 2019, reviews, I brazenly pontificated about Fred Chappell’s As If It Were: Poems, “If any other book gets any award for the most outstanding Appalachian poetry book of this year, one could easily argue that to be a travesty.” I spoke too soon and too carelessly. Yes, an awards committee could easily judge that a book of all new poems by Fred Chappell is more deserving than a compilation of poems previously published in book form, but there is no way that an award given to Oblivion Banjo by Charles Wright would be a “travesty.” Nice that Chappell was a North Carolina Poet Laureate, but Wright was a United States Poet Laureate! Both earned a Bollingen Prize, but Wright also has a Pulitzer and a National Book Award to his credit, along with other prestigious commendations. This book reprints poems from seventeen of Wright’s twenty-two collections, including all the poems in Littlefoot. "Wright’s poetry is driven by a trembling wonder befor