"In his generation, the generation of Ashbery, Rich, Ammons, Ginsberg, Plath, and Merrill, Wright is perhaps closest to Plath in his intensity of the image, closest to Ammons in his sense of the sidereal. But he sounds like nobody else, and he has remained faithful to insights and intuitions--of darkness as of light--less than common in contemporary America." --Helen Vendler, The New Republic

"Chickamauga marks a new turning point in Wright's career . . . Like [Wallace] Stevens's The Rock, Chickamauga is the result of a self-consciously imposed limitation . . . Most of Wright's new poems fit neatly on one page, and, if anything, each poem seems more gorgeous than the one preceding it . . . Wright's turn toward smaller poems is the result of a metaphysical as well as formal dilemma . . . [It] is a beautiful book, bearably human yet in touch with the sublime; I would not want to be deprived of any of its poems. But I can't help wondering what Charles Wright--who must be thought of as one of our living masters--could possibly do next." --James Longenbach, The Yale Review