Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems

The poems in Negative Blue are remarkable for their sharpness of language. Wright is a master at fingering through the spectrum of language to secure that rare, particular word that both fits perfectly and at the same time unhinges the reader with its unfamiliarity. His modernist upbringing in the footsteps of Pound and Eliot has imbued his poetry with a strong sense of the disordering of the world still struggling with the endless attempt to get at the ultimate sense of things through words.