CHARLES WRIGHT'S 'CHICKAMAUGA' CHOSEN TO 
RECEIVE $10,000 LENORE MARSHALL POETRY PRIZE FOR
 MOST OUTSTANDING BOOK OF POETRY 

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Nov. 8 -- University of Virginia
English professor Charles Wright's recent poetry book,
"Chickamauga," has been chosen to receive the 1996 Lenore Marshall
Poetry Prize, an annual $10,000 award for the most outstanding book
of poetry published in the United States in the previous year. The
award is sponsored by the Academy of American Poets in conjunction
with The Nation magazine through an endowment from the New Hope
Foundation.
	Wright's book was chosen from more than 130 submissions. The
judges for the award were poets Yusef Komunyakaa, Philip Levine and
Laurie Sheck.
	Wright, who holds the Souder Family professorship in English
and teaches in the U.Va. Creative Writing Program, has won numerous
previous honors for his poetry, including a National Book Award in
poetry (for "Country Music:  Selected Early Poems" in 1983), an
Award of Merit Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters,
and, in 1993, the prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honoring
lifetime achievement in poetry.  He was elected to the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995.
	"Has any other American been writing as beautifully and
daringly over the past 25 years as Charles Wright? Possibly.  But I
cannot imagine who it would be," wrote Levine, the Lenore Marshall
Prize judging committee chair, in announcing the award. An essay by
Levine on "Chickamauga" will appear in a coming issue of The Nation,
along with a selection of poems from the book.
	"Chickamauga," published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is
Wright's eleventh collection of poems.  His previous books include
"The World of the Ten Thousand Things:  Poems 1980 1990," "Zone
Journals," "County Music," "The Southern Cross," "China Trace," and
"Hard Freight." He has published two volumes of criticism,
"Halflife" and Quarter Notes."  His translation of Eugenio Montale's
"The Storm and Other Things" was awarded the PEN Translation Prize
in 1978.
	Wright has taught at U.Va. since 1983.
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November 7, 1996
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