To read The Hanging God is to experience the ordinary world transformed by sly artfulness into a place filled with mystery and meaning. James Matthew Wilson is a poet who works like a priest, rendering the elements of quotidian life—its sublime gifts and severe mercies alike—into bearers of sacramental grace. Wilson sees deeper than we do; and in these poems, with lucidity both stark and humane, he reveals profundity hidden beneath everydayness.
How good to be reading a grown-up poet! No virtue-signaling in this poetry, though it's full of the harshest, most violent and liberating moral wisdom. None of the croon of fashionable free verse, but instead, complex fractured metrical forms and crazy rhymes that distort language until it squirts out its real meaning. No pandering to the niceness of the poetic audience, but prophetic bluntness that breaks our expectations and makes them gash gold vermillion.
Dana Gioia's Forward to the volume is perhaps the most definitive statement on the place of my verse in contemporary letters that has yet been published and, I think, invites those with an interest in literature but perhaps a wariness before the over-abundance and obscurity of modern poetry into conversation, study, and delight.
Click on the book cover to learn more or buy your copy.
We are still a little ways out from publication day, but, this morning, I held in my hand an advance page-proof edition of The Hanging God. Angelico Press has done marvellous work in designing a book that captures the drama and the spirit of these poems. Those who offered words of advance praise, and Dana Gioia, who wrote a Forward for the edition, have done me an immense favor by lending their names to this small book that, I hope, will reward readers with their explorations of the mysteries of darkness and the mysteries of light. More will follow here and elsewhere, in the days ahead, as the book becomes available for sale. But, I wanted to share a preview of the new-born book itself with interested readers.
"The Last Structuralist," my review of Cynthia Haven's Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard, has just appeared in the Claremont Review of Books. Click the cover to read.
One of the first ambitious projects I undertook, as a young poet, was a sequence entitled Mythologies from Downriver. It consisted of classical myths reset Downriver, that is, in the poorer suburbs running along the Detroit river in Michigan, south of the city; it came to the number of four short lyrics and a long narrative poem.
"Hyacinth," actually third in the sequence, was my first published poem, and appeared, after years' delay, in the final issue of the fine and much missed Edge City Review. Dated 2003 or so, I am pretty sure the number actually appeared long after that. Some years later, Chronicles published a much revised version of "Lachesis on the Party Line," a poem in which I took much pleasure as it was my first one in terza rima and, further, I grew up with a party line at our summer cottage, hard though it is to believe. That was in 2014. This last spring, Jesus, the Imagination published "Zeus Gives Birth to Dionysus," the first of the sequence and one nicely set in a men's restroom in a bar in Taylor, Michigan.
​Just this week, Measure published "Silenus and His Gang." This is my one poem in the accentual alliterative form. This is also Measure's penultimate print issue, and so evidently these poems are destined to come along at the end of many good things.
The last of the poems, a long narrative called "Memories of Apollo," contains some of my best early stanzas, but I have never tried to publish it. Someday, perhaps, once I can be sure the whole thing meets my present standard. My apprenticeship in poetry was a long one and it took a long time for me to see what works and what does not to constitute a tight and satisfactory meter in the age after free verse.
Because Measure is soon to convert to an all digital format and is in the process of creating a digital archive of its back issues, I thought it would do no harm to include here a copy of "Silenus and His Gang." Click the image of Silenus to read a copy of those printed pages.
Think Journal's new issue is out, including my poem, "Premises." The issue was released during the Writing the Rockies conference, where I taught a three-day graduate workshop in poetic meter and rhythm, and where I also delivered a lecture, "Defining Poetry by Its Ends: Memory, Meter, Metaphor," as part of the annual critical symposium on poetry, hosted by Jan Schreiber. While "Premises" is not available for reading online, you can subscribe to Think's semiannual edition and support its efforts to renew metrical poetry in our day (click the logo at left).
This poem shares the same title (and comes from the same poetic sequence) with another poem that will appear this fall in The Best American Poetry 2018. I'll be reading the other "On a Palm" at the New School, in Manhattan, on September 20th. Several authors from the anthology will also be coming to Villanova this February for a regional launch, reading, and celebration. Check back here for news on that.
The Hanging God, my second full-length collection of poems, will appear just in time for me to deliver the annual First Things poetry reading, on October 28th, in New York City. That will be the second of several major readings I'll be giving in New York, here in Pennsylvania, in Dallas, and elsewhere, during the year ahead. If you or someone you know might be interested in hosting me for a reading or lecture from Fall 2018-Spring 2019, you are welcome to click the Contact page and drop me a line. I am just working out my schedule now.​ Once again, check back here regularly for more information on upcoming events.
Timothy Murphy died just over a week ago, a poet about whom I'd written in The Weekly Standard, but also one to whom I'd promised a more substantial essay on his work, one that would define it for the age. I wanted that to happen before he passed away; the sheer bulk of his writing defied me. I have a one foot pile of his manuscripts, some of which were bound at home, some of which were published, sitting by me as I write this, and I know that there are at least three other books that I have tucked away somewhere, at least drafts of them he sent unasked. A proper tribute to this prolific, human and lovable, but uneven poet will be forthcoming.
For the moment, however, I invite you to enjoy with me the work of two younger talents with whom Murphy would have felt immediate kinship.
My poem, "Return to St. Thomas," appears in the new issue of First Things magazine. Click the picture of the eponymous church to read the poem. This is a poem, I think, best read in the context of some of my other recent poems in that magazine, and so I invite you to click the FT logo to go to the magazine's archive of my work in its pages.
If you are in search not merely of discussion of contemporary letters in the abstract, but an actual encounter with poems that have a certain spiritual or intellectual depth, then please allow me to recommend that you have a look in the pages of the spring issue of The Hudson Review or in the new edition of Presence, where you may find some sapphic stanzas by my hand.
"Around which all that great house turned"
The latest issue of National Review includes my new poem, "My Grandmother's Kitchen." Our lives distill into chapters, and last summer really was my "summer of tetrameter," and I've noticed that my tetrameter poems are always about mystery. Then again, most poems are.
"So truth may not die in the ear"
The annual Alabama Literary Review has once again outdone itself with a superb volume comprising work by many of our finest contemporary poets, including Rhina P. Espaillat, Alfred Corn, and John Whitworth. My poem "Self-Possession" concludes its alphabetized contents. Click the cover at left to access the whole free issue, including some impressive fiction, reviews, and poems.
I am most pleased to share this announcement. Samuel Hazo's The World within the Word has just been published with a forward by the great philosopher (about whom it was written) Jacques Maritain, and with a substantial critical and historical introduction by yours truly. I read Hazo's writing on Maritain, back in my graduate student days at Notre Dame, and indeed drew on his ideas for my own work on Maritain and art and poetry. My introduction to this book -- Hazo's dissertation, published sixty years after it was written and reviewed by Maritain himself -- provides a comprehensive introduction to Maritain's role in the Catholic revival of the first half of the twentieth century.
Anyone with a yearning for the old days of Catholic literary and intellectual life -- ballasted as it was by Notre Dame's (alas lost) educational daring and (still with us) football greatness -- or with a desire to learn why it is Jacques and Raissa Maritain should have changed so many lives, will find something to please them in these pages. Beyond that, anyone curious to see how the young poet Samuel Hazo first went about the craft of poetry and carved out for himself a distinguished place in American and Catholic letters will benefit from my essay at defining Hazo's poetic and metaphysical vision.
This morning, I return to the pages of Front Porch Republic with a new essay on our "Joyless Moderns." Take a tour through Descartes and Hobbes, but also Herbert and Donne, to consider what it is we have been taught by the modern "school of disenchantment." But don't enroll yourself.
When you are ready, consider the depths of the mystery of this world given to delight our imaginations, by reading my latest poem in America magazine, "James's Book." When I give public readings, the one poem I can be reasonably sure the audience will know is my "Prayer for Livia Grace." Here is the complementary poem, written for her younger brother. Joined with "On a Box of Rainbow Sprinkles," written for her baby brother, Thomas, this poem brings me very close to having published one for each of the children. Cecilia will have to wait, accepting for the moment the one line dedication to The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking.
Click the chair to read "Joyless Moderns" and the lyre to read "James's Book." Click the book cover to read another recent essay of mine on joy. And, finally, if you are new to my work and like what you see, have a look at the BOOKS page of this site, by clicking on Some Permanent Things​.
The online magazine Law and Liberty has just published my review essay, "Joy's Mysteries," which discusses Christian Wiman's anthology Joy: 100 Poems. Click the book cover to read.
I will be giving a number of poetry readings and lectures this coming year, some open to the general public, some not. If you are in the area, I hope you will join us. Check back here frequently, as I will be updating this calendar regularly in the coming month. Click the icons at left for more information about an event.
February 19, 2018 (Monday), 8:00 p.m. "Faith, Aesthetics, and the Trinitarian Dimensions of Beauty," a lecture at Hillsdale College. Free and open to the public.
February 21, 2018 (Wednesday), 7:00 p.m. A reading from Some Permanent Things. The Prop Shop, Spring Arbor University. 106 E. Main St. Spring Arbor, MI 49283. Free and open to the public.
February 22, 2018 (Thursday), 10:30 a.m. "The Part the Muses Give Us," a lecture and poetry reading, at Bloomfield Christian School. Students and faculty only.
February 22, 2018 (Thursday), 5:30 p.m. A reading of The Stations of the Cross. 113 Ham Library, Rochester College. Free and open to the public.
February 23, 2018 (Friday), 7:00 p.m. "The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry." Catholic Studies Speaker Series. Donnelly Center. Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Free and open to the public.
April 7, 2018 (Saturday), mid-morning. Panel discussant at Big Questions Facing the Free Society, the annual meeting of The Philadelphia Society (April 6-8).
April 19, 2018 (Thursday), 7:00 p.m. "Poetic Meter as the Habituation to Metaphysics," a keynote address at the 24th Annual Conference of the Assocation for Core Texts and Courses. Sheraton Conference Center, Framingham, MA. For registered participants only.
"Rediscovering the Form of Things," my lecture delivered as part of the reception of the 2017 Hiett Prize, has just been made available by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. I have been looking forward to sharing it specifically so that all those people to whom I owe so much gratitude may now actually hear me pronounce a few words of thanks.
A Look at Richard Wilbur's "Cassocked Shadow"
Richard Wilbur is a writer who rewards constant revisiting. I will have him by my side for many years to come, I pray, though his soul has left us. Click the gnomon to read my most recent essay on the significance of his achievement, as Catholic World Report publishes "The Cassocked Shadow of Richard Wilbur." You can find my previous essay, from The Weekly Standard​, on Wilbur's achievement by way of a link at the beginning of this new essay.
I announced yesterday that my poem, "On a Palm," which first appeared in Presence (2017), has been selected to appear in the 2018 edition of The Best American Poetry. I am so honored to be included in this anthology, where, two decades ago, I first got my bearings on the state, the strengths, and the weaknesses of contemporary poetry. It remains a benchmark of sorts, and I am delighted that my work will have this chance to find a new, perhaps broader, audience. The volume appears this coming September.
While I was sending word of that good news to friends, the contract from my new publisher arrived. And so, I am pleased to announce, my fourth book of poems, The Hanging God, will appear this fall. I will hold off on further details until I have the contract filed safely away. I have been holding off on publishing this book for a number of reasons, including the hope of making it perfect. I guess we'll see if I succeeded at the other end of this year.
Matt Robare offers a generous, serious, but tough, review of The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition, in the University Bookman. Click the UB icon to read the whole thing.
I continue to add dates to my winter/spring lectures and readings schedule. Click the Some Permanent Things icon to learn more. And, check back frequently, as some are still in formation.
The time has arrived for a mid-Advent update, and I have at least a couple items to share, both of them related to First Things magazine.
If you are shopping for a fine Christmas present for a dear friend or family member (or, perhaps, an enemy) may I suggest to consider Some Permanent Things, The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking, or my latest book, The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness and Beauty in the Western Tradition? Click on the Vision book cover to visit a selection of reviews of these and other titles.
I have much to be thankful for, this Thanksgiving morning, and want to share just a few items that may be of interest to readers. I returned from a week in Dallas where, among other things, I receive the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. The lectures I delivered during that week will be available shortly.
Steve Knepper has written a superb essay on my poetry for the University Bookman (click the icon to read). Gerald Russello, editor of the Bookman, has also published a review essay of The Vision of the Soul (click icon to read). I'll be going on the Mike Church Show soon to talk about it. Finally, First Things and The New Criterion have published some of my poems: "The Fourth Sunday of Advent" and "On a Box of Rainbow Sprinkles" (click the icons to read).
Richard Wilbur died last weekend, at the age of 96. This last spring marked the publication of his authorized biography, and my review was just about to go to press when the news of Wilbur's passing reached me. The Weekly Standard now publishes my account of Wilbur and his work and, I hope, explains why we have been fortunate to bear witness to the career of one of America's few categorical achievements in poetry. Click the portrait to read, "Richard Wilbur, Remembered: The Life and Work of a Great American Poet."
During the first full week of November, I'll speak or otherwise participate in six events in Dallas, including several associated with my reception of the Hiett Prize. Many of these events are public, and I invite you to come out for one or more of them. Please click the Phoenix to learn more about the Hiett events, the magazine logo to register for the First Things lecture, and the college crest for more information on my visit to the University of Dallas.
November 7, 6:30pm, Dallas Institute (2711 Routh St.), Hiett Forum, an evening of poetry featuring James Matthew Wilson and Sarah Cortez.
November 8, 7:00pm, The Covenant School (7300 Valley View Lane), A First Things Lecture: Between Self and Soul, On Being both More and Less than We Think We Are.
November 9, 6:30pm, The University of Dallas (SB Hall Multipurpose Room), A Lecture: On Poetic Traditions: T.S. Eliot, Alasdair MacIntyre, and the Practice of Reason.
November 10, 3:30pm, The University of Dallas (SB Hall Serafy Room), A Seminar: Three Problems for the Modern Catholic Poet in a "Secular Age."
I have been keeping busy and have found some time to write amid the crush of the new semester. Have a look below to see new work that's just out or to learn more about my upcoming poetry reading in Philadelphia. As always, click on the appropriate logo above to read more.
Poetry Reading Details. On Monday, October 2nd, at 6:30pm, I shall give a poetry reading with Ryan Wilson, author of the Donald Justice Prize-winning The Stranger World, at the Free Library of Philadelphia (1901 Vines St., Room 108). Please join us for what I hope will be a stirring performance to be followed by a book signing.
New Publications. In the October issue of First Things appears my extended meditation on the new America in which we live, "Autumn Road."
Catholic World Report has just published my new essay, "On Teaching the Liberal Arts." This is one of a number of essays I've written reflecting on the purpose and practice of liberal education, and I thought it might be nice to gather some of them together. ISI's Intercollegiate Review published "Three Ways the Liberal Arts will Change your Life," while Crisis (true to form in its choice of titles, if not to the spirit of the essay) published "The Overweening Pride of the Professorial Class."
Fall Lectures Schedule. It looks as though I will be spending the entire first week of November (6th-10th), in Dallas, and speaking in a number of venues, as I receive the Hiett Prize, deliver a First Things lecture, and perhaps visit the University of Dallas to talk about poetry and tradition. Check back here for more information in the weeks ahead.