In Ghostlight: Poems

by Ryan Wilson

In Ghostlight, a long-awaited second collection of original poems by Ryan Wilson, considers the haunting of the contemporary mind. With virtuosic formal variety and masterful craft, these poems range from rural America to Italy to the Holy Land, as they chronicle the dynamism of a spiritual odyssey toward the eternal through both past and present. Wilson employs sonnets, Pindaric and ballad stanzas, alliterative hemistichs in imitation of the Anglo-Saxon, and other ancient forms to enlighten the modern experience, from smartphones and Facebook to jumbo jets, entangled in a reciprocal relationship with myths, sacred literature, and traditions.Revealing that the past and the everlasting can inform the present at any given moment, In Ghostlight conveys how a vision acknowledging this dual illumination helps us understand ourselves and others in our fraught, complex era.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 31, 2024

Reviews

[Matthew Buckley Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What we seek here, we find. / There is no other story."

"In Ghostlight" is what a poetry collection ought to be: sweet, sleek, sharp-edged, and over with too soon. The erudition, formal mastery, and range of subject matter all so evident in these pages are also all beside the point. So much poetry today concerns itself with anything but the reader. Wilson has no need of such distractions. His poems ask nothing of you but to break your heart.

[Kaitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hauntingly beautiful, references from mythology woven into life's daily activities.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Is it so bad to try to be content?
Is it so very dreadful to forgive the world the wounds that it delivers?"