The Catholic Culture Podcast: 133 – Think Like a Poet

May 25, 2022

In a wide-ranging and erudite interview, poet and translator
Ryan Wilson joins the podcast to discuss how the poet makes use of
the classical virtue of xenia or hospitality, what poets
can learn from the work of translation, the “romantic turn” (inner
vision) and the “classical turn” (communication/craft) in poetry,
the great Latin poet Horace, and more. Ryan performs, in his
dynamic style, classic poems by Horace and others, as well as his
own poems.

Ryan Wilson is an adjunct professor of English at the Catholic
University of America, editor of the journal Literary
Matters, and a visiting professor of poetry in the MFA program
at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He is the author of
three books: The Stranger World, a collection of
original poems; How to Think Like a Poet;
and Proteus Bound: Selected Translations, 2008-2020.
Forthcoming are his anthology of contemporary Catholic poetry from
Paraclete Press (spring 2023), and another book of original poems,
The Ghostlight.

Timestamps

0:00 – Proteus Bound

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

28:05 – The romantic turn and the classical turn

46:22 – Ryan Wilson, “Xenia”

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

1:03:35 – Translation as training for the poet

1:17:47 – The Latin poetry of Horace

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

2:20:00 – How Ryan relates as a Catholic to classical
literature

2:27:10 – Ryan Wilson, “Philoctetes”

Links

Proteus Bound: Selected Translations, 2008-2020
https://www.cuapress.org/9781736656129/proteus-bound/

How to Think Like a Poet
https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/p97/How_to_Think_Like_a_Poet%2C_by_Ryan_Wilson.html

The Stranger World
http://www.measurepress.com/measure/index.php/catalog/books/stranger-world/

Literary Matters https://www.literarymatters.org/

This podcast is a production of CatholicCulture.org. If you like
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