Charles Wright, New Poet Laureate: “You’ve still got to write it down”

Charles Wright will be the new US poet laureate! And he’s phenomenal, don’t you think? Here’s a quick interview he did with NPR, which includes a poem at the end with this gorgeous stanza:

We won’t meet again. So what?
The rust will remain in the trees,
and pine needles stretch their necks,
Their tiny necks, and sunlight will snore in the limp grass.

And here’s a bit from one of my favorites of his, “Black Zodiac,” which is simultaneously so smooth and so jagged that reading it almost makes me feel insane:

The unexamined life’s no different from

the examined life —

Unanswerable questions, small talk,

Unprovable theorems, long-abandoned arguments —

You’ve got to write it all down.

Landscape or waterscape, light-length on evergreen, dark sidebar

Of evening,

you’ve got to write it down.

Memory’s handkerchief, death’s dream and automobile,

God’s sleep,

you’ve still got to write it down.