A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

All in the Unsaid

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Black Zodiac, Charles Wright pursues timeless questions of aging and mortality.

An Illuminated Mind

Tennessee native and former U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Wright is sometimes described as worldly, even cosmic, in his subject matter, and yet his poems are often grounded in everyday reality and memories of his home state. Oblivion Banjo brings together the poet’s own selection of work from a career spanning nearly half a century.

Metaphysician of Daily Life

In advance of his return to Tennessee, Chapter 16 surveys the life and work of Charles Wright, whose poems are both accessible and deeply philosophical. Wright, a native of Pickwick Dam, will do two public events at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City on October 25.

A Tennessean’s Way of Seeing

July 1, 2016 In the eighth of a nine-essay series commemorating the centennial year of the Pulitzer Prizes, Bobby C. Rogers remembers his teacher, Charles Wright, and Black Zodiac, the book that finally won Wright a Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

“Tennessee Line”

June 20, 2014 Charles Wright, the newly appointed U.S Poet Laureate, has won the National Book Award, the PEN Translation Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Griffin Prize, the American Book Award in Poetry, The Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize. He was born in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, and grew up in Oak Ridge and Kingsport.

From Pickwick Dam to Poet Laureate

June 13, 2014 Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced yesterday that Charles Wright will serve as the Library’s twentieth Poet Laureate of the U.S. Wright will assume his post in the fall of this year, beginning with a reading at the Library on September 25.

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