SELF-PORTRAIT
by Charles Wright
There is a street which runs
Slanting into a square
There is a marble hand
There is a pair of glasses
A statue also
Casting a long shadow
Someone is crossing the square
Nailed to a door
There is a pair of gloves
SOURCE: Poetry (September 1969).
IMAGE: “Love Song” by Giorgio de Chirico (1914).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Charles Wright published his first collection of poems, The Grave of the Right Hand (Wesleyan University Press), in 1970. His second and third collections, Hard Freight (1973) and Country Music: Selected Early Poems (1983), were both nominated for National Book Awards — and the latter received the prize. His collections also include Scar Tissue (2007), the international winner for the Griffin Poetry Prize; Black Zodiac (1997), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Chickamauga (1995), awarded the 1996 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His many honors include the 2013 Bollingen Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. In 1999, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He is Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Author photo by Yusef El-Amin
Silver Birch Press 