SOURCE: "A Good Ear for the Music of His Own Life," in New York Times, April 16, 1998, pp. E1, 10.

[In the following review Gussow assesses Black Zodiac, and provides some revealing quotes from a telephone interview with Wright.]

Charles Wright has won many prestigious prizes for his poetry, but 1998 is quickly developing into a halcyon year. Last month he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his collection Black Zodiac. On Tuesday he received a Pulitzer Prize for the same book.

The latest prize is special, he said yesterday, "but it doesn't change anything." Speaking by telephone from his home in Charlottesville, Va., he added, in understatement, "It feels comfortable." Mr. Wright, 62, seemed happy and proud but unfazed, perhaps because he has chosen to practice such a solitary occupation.

Reviewing Black Zodiac in The New York Times Book Review in August, the poet Carol Muske said that Mr...