Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Poets and Poems: James Matthew Wilson and “Some Permanent Things”

By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Sunrise at Horseshoe Falls James Matthew Wilson

For the past four or five years, poetry has been enjoying a significant resurgence. But it is a resurgence only when broadly defined, and that means “when including the Internet.” The Guardian recently discussed the rise of a new generation of poets, originating on the Internet and especially Instagram. Instagram poets, when they collect and publish their work in print form, can sell tens of thousands of copies. Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey sold almost half a million copies.

Not even Billy Collins sells half a million copies of a poetry book.

The Guardian article goes on to point out that the Instagram poets have largely bypassed the familiar poetry gatekeepers— the poetry magazines, poetry societies, and academics who often serve as critics. These poets don’t need Poetry Magazine or the Academy of American Poets to help them sell tens of thousands of copies of their poetry books. The old order somewhat sniffs at the transience of the Internet, while the new order runs rather merrily all the way to the bank. The resurgence in poetry has barely touched the traditional poets. We haven’t seen this kind of upheaval in poetry since the modernist poets of the 1910s and 1920s upset the then-traditional poetry cart.

All of this was swirling in my head as I read Some Permanent Things by James Matthew Wilson. The title alone seems almost anti-Internet. Is there anything left in culture that’s really permanent? First published in 2014, this collection is in a second edition, which allowed Wilson to rearrange a few poems, rewrite several, and structure the volume to add to understanding. (The original edition is available on Amazon; the revised edition is at the Wiseblood Books website.)

Some months ago, I read Wilson’s The Hanging God: Poems, and confessed here that the collection left me feeling undone. These are not the kinds of poem you find on Instagram, but neither are they the kinds of poems you find in the collections of many of the poets writing and traditionally publishing today. They are written with rhyme and meter. They are filled with classical, philosophical, and historical references. Most importantly, they are written in highly accessible English, or, as I said before, as if Milton or the Elizabethans used our contemporary language.

The same assessment applies to Some Permanent Things. Wilson has structured the second edition into four sections (the first had six): “The Violent and the Fallen,” “Four Verse Letters,” “La Rochefoucauld’s Ghost,” and “The Christmas Preface.”

The 20 poems of “The Violent and the Fallen” address memories of childhood and teen years, decaying neighborhoods in college towns, the wake of a beloved priest, the dead memorialized by a cemetery monument, a baby daughter, and other subjects that rarely if ever last in their permanent form. The title poem is found in this section, and I’ve reread it at least five times, finding new layers of meaning with each reading.

This poem from the first section is deceptively simple. It begins with “a coil of fabric and lost hair,” becomes a love poem and then transforms itself into a meditation.

Living Together

Some Permanent Things WilsonA coil of fabric and lost hair appears
By trimmed nails, dry husks of dead beetles, bottle
Caps flipped into a corner of our beers,
Where chance has gathered it with dust to mottle

And rise in the bright air from off the river.
I stretch out near the open window, watch
This light particulate with just a quiver
Of frank revulsion. Though I cannot touch

You now—out shelving books to pay the rent—,
The skein of dust before my passive eye
Is your self with my own absently blent
In life’s terse record: its sloughed but faithful sty.

James Matthew Wilson

James Matthew Wilson

The second section is four long and moving verse letters, written to Wilson’s father, mother, and two brothers. It’s followed by the 21 poems of “La Rochefoucauld’s Ghost” (Francois La Rochefoucauld is the 17th century author of maxims, memoirs, and letters). The final section, “The Christmas Preface,” includes six poems about the Advent and Christmas seasons.

Wilson has published eight books, including two poetry collections, Some Permanent Things (2014) and The Hanging God (2018); The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (2014); The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking (2015); and The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (2017).

I don’t know if the Instagram poets will be read a century from now, or even remembered, but I suspect that poems of Some Permanent Things will be. These poems are not of the moment. They tell us to look backward at history and forward to eternity. They speak to the rhyme and meter that is not only a hallmark of formalist poetry but also in life. Read a collection like this and be challenged and changed.

Related:

Poets and Poems: James Matthew Wilson and “The Hanging God”

Photo by Michael Leckman, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young,author of Poetry at Work and the novels Dancing Priest, A Light Shining, Dancing King, and the recently published Dancing Prophet.  

Browse more book reviews

__________________________

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • Poets and Poems: Alfred Nicol and “After the Carnival” - May 8, 2025
  • Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words” - May 6, 2025
  • An Anthology on Reading and Writing Poetry - May 1, 2025

Filed Under: article, book reviews, Books, Classic Poetry, Poems, poetry reviews, Poets

Try Every Day Poems...

Trackbacks

  1. Poets and Poems: James Matthew Wilson and “The Strangeness of the Good” | says:
    February 5, 2021 at 3:46 pm

    […] Poets and Poems: James Matthew Wilson and Some Permanent Things […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • lynn__ on Poet Laura: Gardens and Grandpa
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on Poet Laura: Gardens and Grandpa
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on Poet Laura: Gardens and Grandpa
  • Bethany R. on Poet Laura: Gardens and Grandpa

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy