The Wildness, the Wonder
The Wildness, the Wonder
An Interview with Ryan Wilson by Mary Caroline Whims
“God explodes every understanding…It's why C.S. Lewis says that reality is iconoclastic. Christ is so wild and mysterious, God is so mysterious that no one can keep, capture or hold God. That's what comprehend means:to hold. Literally, we can't comprehend that. We have to be open to that mystery and to that wonder, and it can be frightening.”
Poet Ryan Wilson is no stranger to the turbulent power of inspiration. “When a good poem comes, it's like the muse possesses you.”But it’s not all sitting back and letting it flow. The professor, editor, and translator from Georgia is more than willing to put in the work. Wilson has published a collection of original poetry (The Stranger World, 2017), an essay on the philosophy of poetry (How to Think like a Poet, 2019) and a collection of translations from seven different languages (Proteus Bound, 2021). He does all this while teaching at the Catholic University of America, managing a nonprofit, and serving as editor of the magazine Literary Matters.
I read Wilson’s work in college; in fact, I wrote my honors thesis on his work. Understandably, I’m a little star-struck when I pick up the phone. But Wilson is immediately self-deprecating: “I can’t believe they let you do that,” he jokes.
He answers my call from his bedroom-turned library: “It's wall to wall, pretty much anything I can fit in here. This is hardback, fiction and nonfiction, G through X. I have all my books alphabetized and then categorized around the house. The entire house is buried in books.” His erudition is apparent as he slips easily into Latin, Greek, and Italian throughout our conversation.
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Wilson’s poetry is striking in its willingness to encounter darkness; critic Roseanna Warren went so far as to call Wilson “a poet of nightmares.” This is where we begin our conversation, with my eagerness to understand the sense of darkness and despair prevalent throughout his book The Stranger World. One of the book’s most memorable poems, “Authority,” comes from the perspective of an unrepentant murderer. Other poems are populated by prowling panthers, intrusive ghosts, and hardened sinners. For a long time, I’ve struggled to reconcile these characters with the Wilson’s obvious faith and devotion. But I am reminded of another author who didn’t shy away from tough questions: Flannery O’Connor. Wilson appreciates the comparison.
“My mother wrote her master's thesis on O’Connor in the 60s’s. She was one of the first people to write in a scholarly way about Flannery. So, as every house has an idiolect, a kind of private language, ours was largely composed of quotations from Flannery O’Connor. If anything happened twice my mother would invariably say ‘Oncet i seen it[sic]...’” He laughs into the phone. “That kind of levity and sense of humor is important. But so is the willingness to confront the darkness. Flannery says somewhere that ‘we all prefer comfort to joy.’ If you miss that, you miss the dynamism of the Christian faith. A lot of those who aren't familiar with the Christian faith think that it's sort of like a political philosophy where you say ‘I agree with this’ and then you’re done. But there's a spiritual agon that's always going on. I think that all of us, all the time, are being tempted away from Christ. This struggle is at the center of our lives.”
On the whole, his book of poetry follows a Dante-esque journey in which despair gradually gives way to glimmers of hope. Wilson makes a comparison to the walking metaphors prevalent in the Psalms, as well as Christ’s declaration that He is the way, the truth and the life. “We’re normally very comfortable with the truth and the life, but it’s the way as well. It’s an ongoing, daily, moment-by-moment struggle to choose the freedom of Christ over the slavery of our own will.”
Not only does Wilson’s approach remain honest to the human experience, he also believes it’s the way to the hearts of his readers. “The vast majority of the audience who reads contemporary poetry is entirely secular,” he notes. At multiple points during our interview, he says, “You have to meet the audience where the audience is.” He offers the story of the woman at the well, remarking on the fact that Jesus comes to meet the woman, rather than the other way around. “We live in a fallen world. We live in a world where even the most devout believers struggle with Christ, so what The Stranger World is largely trying to do is to present that struggle, and to open up a space for belief, a space for wonder–an open space where the possibilities of Christ and redemption seem plausible even to those who may have foreclosed on the idea of Christianity. It's a kind of evangelism, I guess you can say. But it's also, I think, true to the Christian experience.”
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Intrigued by this idea, I ask about his background as a writer. When did he know that this was his calling? It started with his family. Wilson’s mother overcame tremendous odds to earn her PhD in English and become a professor. Her parents never completed fourth grade. As a result, Wilson grew up surrounded by books, reading everything from the Hardy Boys to Bobs Merrill biographies. “I always liked to play with words,” Wilson recounts. After a high school experience mainly focusing on baseball, Wilson entered college thinking he would study political science to become a lawyer. He remembers the day when all his plans changed.
“My fall semester freshman year, I was in an English class, and we read ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ I couldn't make heads or tails of it…But I was so enchanted with it, and so in love with it, and so intrigued by the mystery of it. Some of the lines seemed to speak to the parts of me that were so deep that I'd never articulated them to anyone else. The poem seemed to know me. So the next day I changed my major to English. I shaved my head and bought a bunch of pretentious writing notebooks and said, ‘I'm going to be a poet now. I have to do this. I want to be able to do for other people what this poem has done for me.’”
There was no looking back. Wilson far exceeded the required English credits and spent his free hours roaming the library, especially the section of contemporary American poetry. After graduation, he began teaching and eventually earned his MFA from Johns Hopkins. Wilson also spent time learning multiple languages and sharpening his poetic craft by translating older poets. Just before our conversation, he finished a typical morning task: translating one of Horace’s odes.
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Wilson likes to wake early, spending his first moments with a coffee and the Bible in hand. After a good stretch, he puts on music—favoriting Bach and Arvo Pärt—before settling down to write for the next four or five hours. When he has time away from his teaching work, he reads, and usually keeps about six or seven books open at once. “I’m a promiscuous reader,” he laughs, noting that Cold Mountain, Pride and Prejudice, a biography of William Blake, and the poetry of Tao Yuanming are in his current rotation.
God’s creation undoubtedly serves as one of Wilson’s greatest inspirations, and he takes long afternoon walks whenever possible. “In another life I could have very happily been a monk. I like fields and woods, and I’m happiest there. So I like solitude a great deal—the spiritual vibrance of it. I'm constantly in wonder at the natural world. It fills me with life spiritually.” At the same time, he knows the need to be with others. “To be a writer, you have to return to the world of words and the world of things. To me, one of the important ways of thinking about writing is in terms of kenosis, the emptying out of Christ. He did that because of love…It takes a certain humility, and it takes a great deal of love to do that. St. Augustine says that ‘Love calls us to the things of this world.’ Coming into this world, having that presence, being here, is where writing is done, and where community is built.”
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Despite the long and difficult hours that Wilson pours into his work, he recognizes that part of it will always remain outside of his control. He speaks about the striking moments of inspiration that inform his writing: “There are poems that I look at and I think, I couldn't write that, how did I write that? And it's this feeling of being unconscious… It comes from this constant work and then something outside you, I mean something else kind of possesses or takes over you.”
His words move me; an aspiring writer myself, I have struggled to explain the feeling of these strange moments. “But it’s the best feeling,” Wilson responds warmly. “When you're in a real thing, I think it's the Holy Spirit that's giving you those words, and it's moving through you. And so yes, it is sort of terrifying… there's a kind of mysterium tremens, shaking with wonder or awe. ‘What is this? What was that?’” The Spirit, Wilson offers, is what gives “shape and life and form to chaos,” as He did in the beginning over the blank waters of the world. “Our creation is a sort of mini creation which we couldn't do without the first creation. It’s intimidating and terrifying because we have the responsibility to make everything work together in our work in the way that God made a world that works,” he says. “Everything has a function, everything has a purpose despite the wild variety.”
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Does Wilson have any advice for burgeoning poets and artists? “There's no better way to learn your craft than by translating masters and imitating masters,” he says. Wilson feels that his work in Proteus Bound is perhaps his most personal yet, since he reveals the classical sources which so deeply informed his original poetry.
He also urges young artists to not sell themselves short. “Shakespeare was a glovemaker’s son from the boondocks…You don't know how good you are until you do it.”
For many reasons, poetry is a difficult frontier for the Christian writer. But the contemplation it requires of the poet reaps rich rewards. “I want to remember the wildness, the wonder that is everywhere in creation,” says Wilson. “Poetry is like that, in the way that the Scriptures are. There’s mystery and there’s wonder. There are things that are hard to understand, things that you have to live with for years to understand. It's designed that way to lead us toward discovery, so that we're always discovering—even if it's discovering things that we'd known and forgotten...This poetry is not sacred in the general way of speaking, in the way the Scriptures are, but it has a similar goal of serving as a guide for us on our spiritual journey.” To his readers, Wilson is an able and attentive guide.
Mary Caroline Whims
Writer & Editor
A recent graduate of Hillsdale College, Mary Caroline writes for strangers in the street and magazines like First Things. You can read more of her work on Instagram @marycarolinewrites
Find Ryan Wilson’s Work Here