Tweetspeak Poetry

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

Poets and Poems: James Matthew Wilson and “The Strangeness of the Good”

By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Reading the poems of James Matthew Wilson leads one to consider the things that matter in life. It’s an exercise in calming the emotions and quieting the soul. Wilson celebrates the permanent as opposed to the transitory; one learns more about our common humanity by reading “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales or a play by Shakespeare than looking at any tweet on Twitter, photograph on Instagram, or post on Facebook. (The exception may be TikTok, where we can demonstrate our common humanity by illustrating just how ridiculous we’re willing to look.)

What matters to Wilson, as explored in his poetry? Family. Children. Tradition. Heritage. A good name. Faith. Work. Responsibility. The wonder of creation. Even something as mundane as the routines that structure our lives.

All of these ideas and themes are found in his latest poetry collection, The Strangeness of the Good. The 46 poems include 15 composed in March through May of 2020, during the first COVID-19 quarantine period. Even these, which express the concern and frustration of lives completely disrupted, share with the other 31 something profound—looking for the good, no matter how difficult, no matter how bad things may look. The good is there; the good has always been there.

In “Imitation,” for example, Wilson considers, without naming it, the very contemporary idea of the person as a completely autonomous agent, unbound by rules, laws, traditions, or social mores. Contrary to John Donne, we like to think of ourselves as completely independent islands. The poem goes back to something very basic, which undercuts that notion of total autonomy.

Imitation

Not long ago, it seemed the fashion
To preach that man was born alone
And died that way, in somber tone,
As if no one could know one’s passion.

Yes, dreary in our solitude,
We sit propped on our wooden chair
Our thought, our anguish, every care
Trapped at an airless altitude.

But was it ever so, this posing?
The infant in his mother’s lap
Already imitates her tap
Of heart, her self himself composing.

And all our thoughts are woven from
Threads bare with crossing times before,
We tread upon an earthen floor
Mounded by prints already come.

And though shales piled high as a cairn
May seem locked in their loneliness,
Aspens too stiff and mute to bless
The neighboring boughs for which they yearn,

Their roots are tangled in the deep,
Their weight is pressing all to one;
And that is less than we have done
Who, at another’s pain, will weep.

James Matthew Wilson

Wilson, an associate professor of literature and religion in the Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions at Villanova University, is both a poet and a poetry critic. His poems and articles are published in such magazines and journals as The New Criterion, Front Porch Republic, Hudson Review, Raintown Review, The Weekly Standard, Dappled Things, and other literary and political publications.

He’s published eight books, including his first full-length poetry collection, Some Permanent Things; 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). The Hanging God: Poems was published in 2018.

When a poet writes of the things that matter, there’s also an implied responsibility: things that matter deserve to be defended. The Strangeness of the Good does more than defend them. It celebrates them.

Related:

Poets and Poems: James Matthew Wilson and The Hanging God

Poets and Poems: James Matthew Wilson and Some Permanent Things

Photo by cattan2011, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.

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)
  • A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
  • World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025
  • Czeslaw Milosz, 1946-1953: “Poet in the New World” - May 13, 2025

Filed Under: article, book reviews, Books, poetry, poetry reviews, Poets

Try Every Day Poems...

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

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

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