SOURCE: “Tracing Charles Wright,” in Parnassus, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring-Summer, 1982, pp. 55-74.

In the following positive review of The Southern Cross, Bedient offers a close analysis of Wright's evolving metaphysical themes, aesthetic perspective, and poetic style in this and previous volumes.

Charles Wright, who longs to elude his too-local life, eludes you even when he isn't trying. He's trying on the cover of his third volume, Bloodlines, where reflected lights (irregular white patches like blotches on an abstract canvas) hide the eyes behind his sunglasses (eyes you know are looking at you). Haloed by a washtub hung on a cabin wall, he's a mock frontier-saint of purity—washed in the beyond, cleaned to blankness, bouncing back brilliance.

Hard Freight (1973), Bloodlines (1975), China Trace (1977), and The Southern Cross (1981) perpetuate with a horizon-pale passion what Yeats called “the inspired condition.” Their often astonishingly beautiful lines seek to “pull that rib of pure...