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The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking
This brilliant book powerfully demonstrates how the evolution of Modern and Post-Modern criticism and theory, free verse, and political ideology have greatly diminished contemporary poetry. The final chapter is a tour de force that compellingly argues for meter as the catalyst that joins syllables, accents, and (often) rhyme to create the deeply subtle artistry of our language's poetry. "What is poetry and what is poetry for? To ask the first question is to ask the second. To answer both in light of the western tradition stretching back to Homer, and against much modernist and postmodernist poetic theory and practice, is the goal of this remarkable book. Poetry's final end is nothing less than to arouse in us a profound sense of wonder in coming to know that 'Reality as a whole is formed as the good-world-order, the intelligible beauty showing forth from [the] cosmic circle of procession and return.'"—David Middleton, author of The Fiddler of Driskill Hill , in The American Conservative
292 pages, Hardcover
First published December 10, 2015
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About the author
James Matthew Wilson
20 books50 followersJames Matthew Wilson is Professor of Humanities and the Founding Director of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing , at the University of Saint Thomas, Houston. An award-winning scholar of philosophical-theology and literature, he has authored dozens of essays, articles, and reviews on all manner of subjects secular and divine, and especially on those where we see the two in their intrinsic relation, as truth, goodness, beauty, and being disclose themselves in art and culture, in the political and intellectual life, in our quest for self knowledge and the contemplation of God. His scholarly work especially focuses on the meeting of aesthetic and ontological form, where the craftsmanship of art-work discloses the truth about being.
Wilson is a poet and critic of contemporary poetry, whose 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.
He has published ten books, including six books and chapbooks of poetry. Among his volumes are: The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (CUA, 2017); the major critical study, The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking (Wiseblood, 2015); and a monograph, The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (both Wiseblood Books, 2014). His most recent books are The Strangeness of the Good (Angelico, 2020) and the poetic sequence, The River of the Immaculate Conception (Wiseblood, 2019).
Wilson serves as Poetry Editor of Modern Age magazine, series editor of Colosseum Books, of the Franciscan University at Steubenville Press, and as director of the Colosseum Institute for writers. He also serves on the boards of several learned journals and societies.
Twice, Wilson has been awarded the Lionel Basney Award by the Conference for Christianity and Literature; he has been a runner up for both the Foley Prize for Poetry by America magazine and the Jacques Maritain Essay Prize by Dappled Things magazine. The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture awarded him the 2017 Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the largest award of its kind. Wilson's The Strangeness of the Good won the Catholic Media Awards prize for poetry in 2021.
Wilson was educated at the University of Michigan (B.A.), the University of Massachusetts (M.A.), and the University of Notre Dame (M.F.A., Ph.D.), where he subsequently held a Sorin Research Fellowship. Wilson joined the University of Saint Thomas, Houston, in 2021, when he co-founded the Master of Fine Arts program.
Wilson is a poet and critic of contemporary poetry, whose 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.
He has published ten books, including six books and chapbooks of poetry. Among his volumes are: The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (CUA, 2017); the major critical study, The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking (Wiseblood, 2015); and a monograph, The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (both Wiseblood Books, 2014). His most recent books are The Strangeness of the Good (Angelico, 2020) and the poetic sequence, The River of the Immaculate Conception (Wiseblood, 2019).
Wilson serves as Poetry Editor of Modern Age magazine, series editor of Colosseum Books, of the Franciscan University at Steubenville Press, and as director of the Colosseum Institute for writers. He also serves on the boards of several learned journals and societies.
Twice, Wilson has been awarded the Lionel Basney Award by the Conference for Christianity and Literature; he has been a runner up for both the Foley Prize for Poetry by America magazine and the Jacques Maritain Essay Prize by Dappled Things magazine. The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture awarded him the 2017 Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the largest award of its kind. Wilson's The Strangeness of the Good won the Catholic Media Awards prize for poetry in 2021.
Wilson was educated at the University of Michigan (B.A.), the University of Massachusetts (M.A.), and the University of Notre Dame (M.F.A., Ph.D.), where he subsequently held a Sorin Research Fellowship. Wilson joined the University of Saint Thomas, Houston, in 2021, when he co-founded the Master of Fine Arts program.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 31, 2015
In "The Fortunes of Poetry," Wilson not only presents an incisive critique of contemporary critical and poetic trends that tend to frustrate amateur readers and the general public, but, much more importantlyy, spends the bulk of the booking seeking to define "pure poetry": what is the essence of poetry? Is it language without social or economic use? Is it prose delineated confusingly on a page? Is it simply "metrical composition"? The final chapter is, to my mind, the most valuable of the book, in that is provides Wilson's (quite inclusive) response. All in all, poetry must be understood not as something apart from tradition, reducible to one element, or as a means of shocking or rejecting society, but as a certain "gift of the gods," a "paradigmatic art" which, with good reason, makes use of memory, meter, and metaphor, but is not reducible to any of these. Good poetry, Wilson contends, is still being written (and innovated!) by many poets today, but these poets are good only to the extent that they value and utilize the traditional craft of poetry.
Philosophically erudite, surprisingly inclusive, wittily penned, Wilson's book is well worth the read for anyone interested in poetry or criticism.
Philosophically erudite, surprisingly inclusive, wittily penned, Wilson's book is well worth the read for anyone interested in poetry or criticism.
November 16, 2017
"The death wish contemporary world extends far, far beyond the literary cabinet, but a world of creativity, a world given over to the slow cultivation of craft, of form, and invention, that leads to growth, self-giving, and new life is one worth defending."
This book is one of the most sane and eloquent defenses of poetry as primarily a metrical practice that I have ever read...on par with Timothy Steele's Missing Measures. Wilson, however, does not hold back in throwing pointed barbs at the proliferation of academic/postmodern "free verse" that is so often unlovely and soulless because it's quest for novelty through fragmentation only results in a dulling sameness of incoherence.
In this book, Wilson's Aristotelian/Thomistic approach to the history of poetry makes us believe again in the possibility of an art that can participate in the Good, the True, and the Beautiful without shame and without that smug, post-human irony that too quickly and too often turns its nose up at meter, traditional form, light verse, or rhyme as a fetter on artistic liberation.
This book is one of the most sane and eloquent defenses of poetry as primarily a metrical practice that I have ever read...on par with Timothy Steele's Missing Measures. Wilson, however, does not hold back in throwing pointed barbs at the proliferation of academic/postmodern "free verse" that is so often unlovely and soulless because it's quest for novelty through fragmentation only results in a dulling sameness of incoherence.
In this book, Wilson's Aristotelian/Thomistic approach to the history of poetry makes us believe again in the possibility of an art that can participate in the Good, the True, and the Beautiful without shame and without that smug, post-human irony that too quickly and too often turns its nose up at meter, traditional form, light verse, or rhyme as a fetter on artistic liberation.
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April 2, 2024An odd book, and not what I was expecting. Wilson thinks much recent poetry (or perhaps 'poetry' so called) is quite bad. Fair enough. He has interesting things to say about the ways in which he thinks it is bad.
But, and this is where I part company with him, he thinks it's very very important to give a definition of "poetry"—to say what it is. And he thinks that the badness of modern poetry has to do with a failure to define poetry well.
"So, then, how shall we define poetry? It is abundantly clear from the previous five chapters that most contemporary poets have failed to grasp its essence, and what they have produced in consequence is, on the whole, an embarrassment" (p. 228).
It is, I will report, not abundantly clear to me either that poetry is the sort of thing to have an essence, nor—even if we were to grant that there is such an essence, and even if were we to agree that much contemporary work is embarrassment—is it clear to me that the cause of this poor produce is a failure to grasp this essence.
I think, for instance, of Socrates' (in Plato's dialogues) suggestion that poets work from inspiration rather than knowledge, and if this is true, then a lack of knowledge of the essence would not inhibit producing good work. Perhaps I've read the book poorly, but it is not clear to me how Wilson has shown this to be wrong.
But, and this is where I part company with him, he thinks it's very very important to give a definition of "poetry"—to say what it is. And he thinks that the badness of modern poetry has to do with a failure to define poetry well.
"So, then, how shall we define poetry? It is abundantly clear from the previous five chapters that most contemporary poets have failed to grasp its essence, and what they have produced in consequence is, on the whole, an embarrassment" (p. 228).
It is, I will report, not abundantly clear to me either that poetry is the sort of thing to have an essence, nor—even if we were to grant that there is such an essence, and even if were we to agree that much contemporary work is embarrassment—is it clear to me that the cause of this poor produce is a failure to grasp this essence.
I think, for instance, of Socrates' (in Plato's dialogues) suggestion that poets work from inspiration rather than knowledge, and if this is true, then a lack of knowledge of the essence would not inhibit producing good work. Perhaps I've read the book poorly, but it is not clear to me how Wilson has shown this to be wrong.
May 16, 2017
This is a revolutionary book. It's words work as an awakening our most vital art, poetry. A reformation and a call to arms. I couldn't praise it more. The book's association of beauty, poetry, and God take it from good to great. I recommend it to all poets. All writers. All artists. And all Christians. Deep, and thought provoking material. I look forward to reading more from this profound author. Loved it.
April 30, 2020
Read the last chapter, if nothing else.
January 7, 2016
A defence of poetry as metrical rather than just a stream of words arranged on a page.
More to follow.
More to follow.
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May 10, 2018Still thinking about it.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews