Oblivion Banjo ― Selected Poems

The selected works of one of our finest American poets

This is an old man’s poetry,
written by someone who’s spent his life
Looking for one truth.
Sorry, pal, there isn’t one.
—from “Ancient of Days”

Over the course of his many collections of poems and decades of work, Charles Wright has built “one of the truly distinctive bodies of poetry created in the second half of the twentieth century” (David Young, Contemporary Poets). Oblivion Banjo, a new selected works spanning his decades-long career—showcases the themes and images that have defined his work: the true affinity between writer and subject, human and nature; the tenuous relationship between description and actuality; and the search for a truth that transcends change and death.

“It’s good to be here,” Wright tells us. “It’s good to be where the world’s quiescent, and reminiscent.” And to be here—in the pages of Wright’s masterful work—is more than good; it's another remarkable gift from the poet around whose influence “the whole world seems to orbit in a kind of meditative, slow circle.”