Robert Wrigley is a poet of America's northern Rocky Mountains. Over three decades his poetry's pervading concerns have been rural Western landscapes and humankind's place within the natural world. His most recent poems have presented a portrait of a nation, one that is a singular part of a singular planet, with an exuberant and frequently exasperating culture. In such a country, the glimpse of a horse under a full moon can be a defining moment, full of grace and a new, if not always comfortable, awareness. So it is with a saved lock of a lover's hair, the memory of a vanished glacier, or a childhood friend disappeared in war. This selection is his first UK publication and covers work from nine collections, including Reign of Snakes, Lives of the Animals, Earthly Meditations and Beautiful Country. Elegiac and lyrical, playful and angry, The Church of Omnivorous Light offers a vision that is fierce, unflinching, and clear. Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.
Recenzijos
'Wrigley ponders what it is that we have that animals lack, and what animals have that we can only long for: their perfect fit with the cosmos - Dramatic and heady, his transporting poems knit us tightly into the glistening web of life' - Booklist. 'In this new book, Wrigley has become someone else, someone who has wandered into a ferocious cave of the natural world and suddenly sees his life, and ours as well, in bold and undreamed of colours. It's almost as though a veil has been lifted from his eyes, and the glorious and terrifying truths have been revealed in poems that are at once majestic and terrifying' - Philip Levine, Ploughshares. 'Lives of the Animals is, in my opinion, a living, breathing, honest-to-goodness contemporary masterpiece' - John Burnside, The Poetry House (Scotland).
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From The Sinking Of Clay City (1979) |
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14 | (1) |
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15 | (1) |
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16 | (3) |
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From Moon In A Mason Jar (1986) |
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Moonlight: Chickens on the Road |
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19 | (3) |
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22 | (2) |
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24 | (1) |
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25 | (1) |
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26 | (2) |
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28 | (1) |
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29 | (6) |
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35 | (2) |
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37 | (2) |
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39 | (3) |
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From What My Father Believed (1991) |
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42 | (2) |
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44 | (1) |
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45 | (3) |
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48 | (2) |
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50 | (2) |
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52 | (2) |
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54 | (2) |
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56 | (1) |
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57 | (3) |
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From In The Bank Of Beautiful Sins (1995) |
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60 | (2) |
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62 | (3) |
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65 | (4) |
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69 | (2) |
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71 | (2) |
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73 | (3) |
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76 | (2) |
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78 | (2) |
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80 | (1) |
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81 | (2) |
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83 | (2) |
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85 | (3) |
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From Reign Of Snakes (1999) |
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88 | (12) |
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Why Do the Crickets Sing? |
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100 | (1) |
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101 | (2) |
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103 | (2) |
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105 | (1) |
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106 | (1) |
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107 | (1) |
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108 | (2) |
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110 | (2) |
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112 | (2) |
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114 | (1) |
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114 | (3) |
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117 | (3) |
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Meditation at Bedrock Canyon |
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120 | (3) |
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123 | (4) |
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127 | (6) |
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From Lives Of The Animals (2003) |
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The Church of Omnivorous Light |
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133 | (2) |
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135 | (2) |
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137 | (1) |
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138 | (2) |
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140 | (2) |
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142 | (1) |
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143 | (2) |
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145 | (2) |
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147 | (1) |
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Highway 12, Just East of Paradise |
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148 | (1) |
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149 | (1) |
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150 | (1) |
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151 | (1) |
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152 | (2) |
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154 | (3) |
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From Beautiful Country (2010) |
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157 | (1) |
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158 | (1) |
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159 | (2) |
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161 | (2) |
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163 | (2) |
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165 | (3) |
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168 | (2) |
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170 | (2) |
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Every Night the Long Swim |
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172 | (1) |
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173 | (5) |
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178 | (1) |
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179 | (1) |
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What Is Yellow About the Yellow Pine? |
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180 | (1) |
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181 | (1) |
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182 | (2) |
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184 | (2) |
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186 | (1) |
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187 | (3) |
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190 | (1) |
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191 | (1) |
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192 | (1) |
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193 | (1) |
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A Photograph of Philip Levine |
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194 | (2) |
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At the Beginning of Another War |
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196 | (2) |
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198 | (1) |
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199 | (1) |
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200 | (1) |
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201 | (1) |
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While You Were Out of Town |
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202 | (1) |
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203 | (1) |
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204 | (2) |
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206 | (1) |
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207 | (2) |
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209 | (2) |
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211 | (2) |
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213 | (1) |
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214 | (2) |
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216 | (3) |
| Index Of Titles And First Lines |
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Robert Wrigley was born in 1951 in East St Louis, Illinois. He was drafted in 1971, but later discharged as a conscientious objector. The first in his family to graduate from college, and the first male for generations to escape work in a coal mine, Wrigley earned his MFA from the University of Montana. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Idaho Commission on the Arts. He has taught at Lewis-Clark State College, Warren Wilson College, the University of Oregon, the University of Montana and Warren College, and now teaches in the MFA program at the University of Idaho. He lives in the woods on Moscow Mountain, Idaho, with his wife, writer Kim Barnes. His first book to be published in the UK, The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2013), draws on several collections published in the US, including Beautiful Country (2010); Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems (2006); Lives of the Animals (2003), winner of the Poets Prize; Reign of Snakes (1999), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award; and In the Bank of Beautiful Sins (1995), winner of the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award and finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of American Poets. Wrigley has also won the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize, Poetry magazine's Frederick Bock Prize, the Poetry Society of America's Celia B. Wagner Award, Poetry Northwest's Theodore Roethke Award, and five Pushcart Prizes.
