Episode 28: Five Contemporary American Poets That Every Catholic Should Read - Interview with James Matthew Wilson

Five Books for Catholics

The books recommended in this episode are:

1. Collected Poems: 1943-2004 by Richard Wilbur
2. A Journey of the Mind: Collected Poems of Helen Pinkerton, 1945-2016 by Helen Pinkerton
3. And after All: Poems by Rhina P. Espaillat
4. Deaths And Transfigurations: Poems by Robert Mariani
5. The Gods of Winter by Dana Gioia ...and as a supplementary recommendation...
6. All The Fun’s In How You Say A Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification by Timothy Steele

Five Books for Catholics may receive a commission from qualifying purchases made using the affiliate links to the books listed.

If we read literature seriously it is because “we seek an enlargement of our being” (C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism). You have probably experienced such an enlargement of your being in reading the great poets of the past. However, poets do not figure prominently, if at all, in the media or public square. Those that do may not strike you as particularly inspiring. Perhaps you assume, therefore, that recent poetry is not worth reading. Even if you do not make that assumption, maybe you have no idea about which poets are worth reading. In this episode, therefore, James Matthew Wilson recommends five contemporary poets every Catholic with an interest in literature should read.

James Matthew Wilson is Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the Founding Director of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing, at the University of Saint Thomas, Houston. He also serves as the Poet-in-Residence for the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Liturgy, as Poetry Editor of Modern Age magazine, and series editor of Colosseum Books, of the Franciscan University at Steubenville Press. He is an award-winning scholar of philosophical-theology and literature. As a poet and critic of contemporary poetry, his work appears regularly in such magazines and journals as First Things, The Wall Street Journal​, The Hudson Review, Modern Age, The New Criterion, Dappled Things, Measure, The Weekly Standard, Front Porch Republic, The Raintown Review, National Review, and The American Conservative. His books include The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (CUA, 2017); The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking (Wiseblood, 2015); The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (Wiseblood Books, 2014); The Strangeness of the Good (Angelico, 2020), the poetic sequence, The River of the Immaculate Conception (Wiseblood, 2019), and I Believe in One God: Praying the Nicene Creed ​(CTS, 2022).

Read the interview at www.fivebooksforcatholics.com/contemporary-american-poetry/

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