A Short History of the Shadow

Luminous new poems from one who has long been a poet of gorgeous description ―William Logan The New CriterionLandscape as Wang Wei says softens the sharp edges of isolation.Don''t just do something sit there.And so I have so I have the seasons curling around me like smokeGone to the end of the earth and back without a sound.―from Body and Soul IIThis is Charles Wright''s first collection of verse since the gathering in Negative Blue of his Appalachian Book of the Dead a trilogy of trilogies hailed among the great long poems of the century (James Longenbach Boston Review). In A Short History of the Shadow Wright''s return to the landscapes of his early work finds his art resilient in a world haunted by death and the dead.