not just because they're short and sonnet-like, although they are, but because they're sorrowful and tuneful and colloquial like American songs. (The one they remind me of most often is "Shenandoah," with its mixture of traditional homesickness and moving on--"I long to hear you," but "I'm bound away.") Often the poems are not only musical but also about music: the music of Little Richard or Etta James or just the everyday human music that hums along down here on earth while things are falling apart for the "grand architect of the universe." Sometimes Wright evokes music by taking his titles from songs, "On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine," "No Direction Home," Well Get Up Rounder, Let a Working Man Lay Down." In "Music for Midsummer's Eve," time is an "untuned harmonium/That Muzaks our nights and days."from Bookslut: Sestets by Charles Wright
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