SOURCE: “Poetry Chronicle,” in Hudson Review, Vol. XLIX, No. 1, Spring, 1996, pp. 166-75.

In the following excerpt, Mason offers an unfavorable assessment of Chickamauga and contends that Wright enjoys undeserved praise and prominence within the literary establishment.

Why is most contemporary poetry so dull?

Consider three thoughts that occurred to me while reading the work of Charles Wright: his ideas are uninteresting, his poems undramatic; his language is only intermittently charged or lyrical; he is among the best-known poets of his generation. If you believe, as I do, that these three statements do not add up, you will also catch the drift of my rhetorical opening. We live in a world in which reputation has little to do with accomplishment. Given the broad context of contemporary American poetry, often so prosaic and self-regarding that it turns away anyone who is not a “professional reader,” Charles Wright is a relatively...