Because Wright's poems, on the whole, are unanchored to incident, they resist description; because they are not narrative, they defy exposition. They cluster, aggregate, radiate, add layers like pearls. Often they stop in the middle, with a mixed yearning and premonition, instead of taking a resolute direction backward or forward. It may be from the Italian poet Eugenio Montale … that Wright learned this pause which looks before and after; Wright recently issued his translation, done in the sixties, of Montale's powerful 1956 volume entitled La Bufera e altro (The Storm and Other Poems).

The translation offers an occasion for a glance at both Montale and Wright; the conjunction helps to define what sort of poet Charles Wright 1935– © 1984 Thomas VictorWright has become. Montale wrote La Bufera during the post-war years, and his pauses in the midst of event come as often as not in the midst of nightmare: "The...