SOURCE: "The Word's Worth," in Village Voice, April 29, 1997, p. 55.

[In the following excerpt, Mobilio favorably reviews the collection Black Zodiac, praising Wright's use of metaphor and verse structure.]

The firecrackers are spent and the ballrooms have been swept up. That April carnival known as National Poetry Month has worked its celebratory magic on the strophe-hungry hordes and now we can get down to the gritty job of actually reading some verse. Assembled here are a few distinct voices—Charles Wright, Lisa Jarnot, Mark McMorris—who, taken together, give some measure of the current scene's energetic polyphony. Indeed, each poet could be said to contend with the others over what a poem can and should do. This and the fact that even the official designation of a poetry month has itself become a matter of differing opinions (particularly those of Richard Howard and Robert Pinsky) are, perhaps, signs of...