Cover of Scar Tissue: Poems

Scar Tissue: Poems

Hard to imagine that no one counts,

that only things endure.

Unlike the seasons, our shirts don't shed,

Whatever we see does not see us,

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however hard we look,

The rain in its silver earrings against the oak trunks,

The rain in its second skin.

—from "Scar Tissue II"

In his new collection, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Wright investigates the tenuous relationship between description and actuality—"thing is not an image"—but also reaffirms the project of attempting to describe, to capture the natural world and the beings in it, although he reminds us that landscape is not his subject matter but his technique: that language was always his subject—language and "the ghost of god." And in the dolomites, the clouds, stars, wind, and water that populate these poems, "something un-ordinary persists."

Scar Tissueis a groundbreaking work from a poet who "illuminates and exalts the entire astonishing spectrum of existence" (Booklist).

Audience
adult
Length
short · 88 pages

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Liked Scar Tissue: Poems? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Scar Tissue: Poems. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

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  3. Warhorses Shares poetry
  4. The Complete Poems Shares poetry, american literature

“People who read Scar Tissue: Poems tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Averno
  2. District and Circle
  3. Collected Poems, 1951-1971
  4. Trilogy: The Walls Do Not Fall / Tribute to the Angels / The Flowering of the Rod

“If you want more of the same, start with these.”

  1. Sailing to Byzantium
  2. New Selected Poems and Translations
  3. Poems
  4. Song

“If it was the poetry that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. New Collected Poems
  2. Old and New Poems
  3. Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge
  4. Veil: New and Selected Poems

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: New Poems
  2. Left Out in the Rain: Poems
  3. Little Girls in Church
  4. Don't Call Us Dead: Poems