Caribou

Wed, Jan 21 2015, 11:12 am

Caribou: Poems

by Charles Wright
Poetry
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Hardcover, 96 pages
$23.00

Late last year Charles Wright was named our new Poet Laureate by Librarian of Congress James Billington. Wright received this assignment in his 79^th year. He recalled some of his younger predecessors – Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky – whom he found “young and vibrant” and active. He finds himself “old and vibrant” and committed, as Poet Laureate, to just “sit here and vibrate and not do a thing." As he says in Ancient of Days:

This is an old man's poetry,
written by someone who's spent his life
Looking for one truth.

This is the entirety of Whatever Happened to Al Lee:

What happened is what happens to all of us: we walked
On the earth, we threw a couple of handfuls of dirt
Into the air, and when it came down it covered us.

This is an old man’s poetry. And, it’s the real thing.