Appreciation …

… Poetry’s Revival and Mr. Wilson – Catholic World Report. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

While their poetry may not land them on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, there has been a renaissance of poets whose critical intelligence and gut says that if you love verse, the one thing that you must not do is set it all free. … One of the most remarkable is James Matthew Wilson, an associate professor in the department of humanities and Augustinian traditions at Villanova University. Though he is said to belong to the “West Chester” school of formalists associated with Gioia, such inside baseball is less important than the fact that he has produced a remarkable body of both criticism and poetry.

Here is my review of Wilson’s The Hanging God:
Virtuosity and verse at the service of the imaginative vision.