SOURCE: A review of Black Zodiac, in Publisher's Weekly, Vol. 244, No. 8, February 24, 1997, p. 84.

[In the following brief review, the critic provides a favorable assessment of Black Zodiac.]

"Out of any two thoughts I have, one is devoted to death," proclaims Wright in this ominous collection of new work. Perhaps because these poems were written around his 60th birthday or perhaps because an imperative moves all good Southern writers to flirt with dissolution, Wright has begun to consider the end that nears. On these pages he creates and explores an almost surreal present purgatory built from varying amounts of Zen Buddhism, memories, paradox and pastoral opulence. Gertrude Stein, Sappho, his physician and a golf buddy all cast their influence. The language is lilting and pacific even as its embedded imagery disturbs: "Honeysuckle and poison ivy jumbling out of the hedge, / Magnolia beak and white tongue, landscape's off-load, love's lisp...