Sestets

Poems

Charles Wright

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

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Sestets is the nineteenth book from one of the country’s most acclaimed poets, a masterpiece of formal rigor and a profound meditation on nature and mortality. It is yet another virtuosic showcase for Charles Wright’s acclaimed descriptive powers, and also an inquiry into the nature of description itself, both seductive and dangerous: “a virtual world/ Unfit for the virtuous.” Like his previous books, Sestets is seeded with the lyrics of old love songs and spirituals, and “there is always room to connect his highly polished poems to the world where most of us lead mundane lives” (Miami Herald). Soaring and earthy, lyrical and direct, Charles Wright is an American treasure, and his search for a truth that transcends change and death settles finally on the beauties of nature and language: “Time is a graceless enemy, but purls as it comes and goes.”

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Praise for Sestets

Praise for Littlefoot:

“If Nature is a haunted house, as Emily Dickinson told us, and Art a house that tries to be haunted, then Wright has created in Littlefoot one of the most satisfyingly possessed landscapes of his career . . . Inside his lyric, there resides a world well beyond the ordinary . . . It is the heart and soul that he delivers so eloquently.” —Thomas Curwen, The Los Angeles Times

Reviews from Goodreads

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James  rated it  
Oct 13, 2010
This little book was my introduction to Charles Wright. I'll almost certainly be reading more of his work. I understand his poetry can sometimes be journal-like with multiple themes. The compact gems of Sestets aren't at all like that. These 6-line poems have a Zen feel to them, but their modest ...more
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Therese  rated it  
Aug 5, 2010
These 6-line poems are exquisite in phrasing and imagery, almost too beautiful to talk about. Each of these 69 sestets (notice the repetition and upside-down repetition of "6") is a marvel of poise: sound and silence; text and white space; the pain of longing and the peace of acceptance; t ...more
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James K.A.  rated it  
Aug 4, 2010
Another marvelous collection of poems from Charles Wright. Read my review article, "Show Me the World," at Comment magazine. ...more
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About the Author

Charles Wright

Charles Wright, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award, and the Griffin Poetry Prize, teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Charles Wright

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Sestets
Poems
Charles Wright

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks
March 2010
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780374532147
ISBN10: 0374532141
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 96 pages
$14.00
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Hardcover

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Hardcover
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
March 2009
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780374261153
ISBN10: 0374261156
5 1/2 X x 8 1/4 inches, 96 pages
$23.00
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