Catholic Culture Podcast: 133 - Thinking Like a Poet

May 25, 2022

Poet and translator Ryan Wilson appeared on the podcast for a wide-ranging, erudite interview about how poets harness the virtues of the classics. Zegna Or hospitality, what poets can learn from translation work, the “Romantic Turn” (inner vision) and the “Classical Turn” (communication/skill) in poetry, the great Latin poet Horace, etc. Ryan will read classical poems by Horace and other poets as well as his own poetry in a dynamic style.

Ryan Wilson is an adjunct professor of English at Catholic University and a magazine editor. Literaturevisiting professor of poetry at the MFA program at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He is the author of three books: A strange world, A collection of original poems. How to think like a poet; and Proteus Bound: Selected Translations 2008-2020She will soon be publishing a collection of contemporary Catholic poetry through Paraclete Press (spring 2023) as well as a collection of original poetry.
Ghost Light.

Timestamp

0:00 – Proteusbound

13:09 – Hospitality as a guiding principle of community, thought, and poetry

28:05 – Romanticism and the turn to classicism

46:22 – Ryan Wilson, “Xenia”

53:39 – Proteus, Hermes, and Orpheus as symbols of the poet

1:03:35 – Translation training for poets

1:17:47 – Latin poem by Horace

2:07:55 – Charles Baudelaire, “The Voice”

2:20:00 – How Ryan engages with classic literature as a Catholic

2:27:10 – Ryan Wilson, “Philoctetes”

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