released 11/10/2023
In an interview from 2000, literary critic Roger Lundin discusses the work of poet Richard Wilbur. He explains why Wilbur can rightly be understood as a New England poet, and how the imaginative tradition of that region reflects the habits of observation and introspection initiated by the Puritans. Lundin comments on several of Wilbur’s poems, including “Love Calls Us to the Things of this World,” “For Dudley,” “Lying,” and “For W. H. Auden.”
24 minutes
PREVIEW
The player for the full version of this Feature is only available to current members. If you have an active membership, log in here. If you’d like to become a member — with access to all our audio programs — sign up here.
More to hear . . .
In 2000, Ken Myers enjoyed an hour-long conversation with poet Richard Wilbur. He had just published a collection of new poems called Mayflies. Wilbur — who died in 2017 — received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry on two occasions, and, in the late 1980s, served as Poet Laureate of the United States, succeeding Robert Penn Warren. This Friday Feature honors National Poetry Month (and poetry itself) by remembering one of the greatest American poets.
Related reading and listening
- Touch’d with a coal from heav’n — Daniel Ritchie finds in the poetry of William Cowper (1731–1800) an anticipation of Michael Polanyi’s epistemology
- How we know the world — Daniel Ritchie argues that poet and hymnodist William Cowper was ahead of his time in critiquing the Enlightenment’s reductionist view of knowledge. (16 minutes)
- William Cowper: Reconciling the Heart with the Head — Daniel E. Ritchie discusses the life and work of poet William Cowper (1731–1800), comparing his commitment to understanding reality through personal knowledge, intuition, and rigorous contemplation with the thought of Michael Polanyi. (43 minutes)
- Bearing witness through poetry — Roger Lundin discusses the incarnational witness of poet Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004), exploring his service to truth and to his native tongue, Polish. (16 minutes)
- Czesław Miłosz: A Poet of Luminous Things — Roger Lundin discusses the themes, breadth, and depth of poet Czeslaw Milosz‘s work, explaining how Milosz incarnated in his life and work a sense of exile and alienation so common to modern man. (43 minutes)
- Soundings of the human soul — Professor John H. Timmerman discusses the poetry of the late Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) and his visit to her home, Eagle Pond Farm. (16 minutes)
- Jane Kenyon: Living and Dying at Eagle Pond Farm — Biographer John H. Timmerman discusses the life and work of poet Jane Kenyon (1947–1995). (53 minutes)
- The formative power of hymns and hymnbooks —
FROM VOL. 149 Christopher Phillips discusses the cultural and spiritual effects of hymns and the “thingness” of hymnals. (18 minutes) - Faith and unbelief —
FROM VOL. 98 This Archive Feature revisits two conversations, one with Roger Lundin and one with David Bentley Hart, on what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (39 minutes) - The rediscovery of meaning — Poet and theologian Malcolm Guite explains Owen Barfield’s idea of the development of consciousness over time, an evolution made evident through language that reveals an earlier, pre-modern way of seeing the world. (63 minutes)
- The desires of the heart, the constraints of creation — Roger Lundin describes how Richard Wilbur’s poetry connects aesthetic experience to life in the world.
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
- Sources of wisdom (and of doubt) — Roger Lundin shares what he has appreciated about Mars Hill Audio conversations, and he discusses what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (32 minutes)
- All manner of thing shall be well — T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is regarded by many as his greatest accomplishment. Today’s Feature presents a lecture about this monumental work, a talk given in 2019 by Dr. Janice Brown. (58 minutes)
- The story of the demotion of stories — Malcolm Guite on the Enlightenment’s rash dismissal of poetic knowledge
- Remembering Roger Lundin (1949-2015) — Today’s Feature presents our first and last interviews with frequent guest Roger Lundin (1949-2015), in which he shares his love of language and discusses a Christian understanding of desire. (34 minutes)
- Feelings made articulate — Glenn C. Arbery on poetry and the intelligibility of the inner life
- Words as fulcrums — Wendell Berry on the mediating responsibilities of poets
- Richard Wilbur: R.I.P. — Poet Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) describes how poetry is at once profoundly private and yet essentially public. Poetry — like love — calls us to the things of this world. (44 minutes)
- From cities humming with a restless crowd — In a much-sung hymn and a little-known poem, William Cowper seeks retirement from worldliness
- A very figurative and metaphorical God — David Lyle Jeffrey on the poetic character of the voice of God
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 149 — FEATURED GUESTS: Dru Johnson, Steven L. Porter, Reinhard Hütter, Matthew Levering, David Lyle Jeffrey, and Christopher Phillips
- Walter Hooper, R.I.P., and Christina Rossetti’s Advent poems — Walter Hooper (1931-2020) describes his first meeting with C. S. Lewis, a man he so admired and long served. In a second chapter in today’s Feature, Emma Mason explains how Christina Rossetti’s hopeful eschatological beliefs influenced the poems she wrote about the season of Advent. (21 minutes)
- Music for St. Cecilia’s Day — Ken Myers introduces several poems and related musical compositions that celebrate the heavenly gift of music and thereby honor St. Cecilia. (21 minutes)
- Spirits in Bondage: Lewis’s early poetry — Karen Swallow Prior and Don W. King discuss C. S. Lewis’s early poetry and the evidence therein of a “frustrated dualism.” (23 minutes)
- On reading and “Englishing” Dante — Jason Baxter, Rod Dreher, and Robert Pinsky discuss the age-old appeal and power of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy to awaken our souls to Divine beauty. (25 minutes)
- Dana Gioia on poets and poetry — In this collection of interview excerpts, poet and essayist Dana Gioia comments on the literary significance and distinctive voices of Longfellow, Donne, Hopkins, and other fellow poets. (25 minutes)
- Six recent books worthy of note — Ken Myers shares a summary of six recent books that we want our listeners to know about but whose authors we won’t be interviewing. (15 minutes)
- Mary Midgley, R.I.P. — Philosopher Mary Midgley (1919–2018) was a tireless critic of the reductionist, atomistic claims of modern science. (16 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 135 — FEATURED GUESTS: Bob Cutillo, Hans Boersma, Dana Gioia, Matthew Levering, Bruce Gordon, and Markus Rathey
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 125 — FEATURED GUESTS: Brent Hull, David Koyzis, Steve Wilkens, Roger Lundin, Craig Bernthal, and Kerry McCarthy
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 119 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mary Eberstadt, Allan Bevere, Peter J. Leithart, Steven Boyer, Karen Dieleman, and Peter Phillips
- David Lyle Jeffrey: “God’s Patient Stet” — David Lyle Jeffrey observes the sense of consistency in poet Richard Wilbur’s work which emerges from his poetic craftsmanship and his awe of and affection for both Nature and human nature. (25 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 110 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kevin Belmonte, David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet, Mark Noll, Alan Jacobs, and Jonathan Chaplin
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 109 — FEATURED GUESTS: Douglas Coupland, Charles Mathewes, William T. Cavanaugh, William Dyrness, Steven Guthrie, and Susannah Clements
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 103 — FEATURED GUESTS: Steven D. Smith, David Thomson, Adam McHugh, Glenn C. Arbery, Eric Miller, and Eric Metaxas
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 98 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stanley Hauerwas, Clarke Forsythe, Gilbert Meilaender, Jeanne Murray Walker, Roger Lundin, and David Bentley Hart
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 87 — FEATURED GUESTS: John Witte, Jr., Steven Keillor, Philip Bess, Scott Cairns, and Anthony Esolen
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 86 — FEATURED GUESTS: Roger Lundin, Lawrence Buell, Harold K. Bush, Jr., Katherine Shaw Spaht, Steven L. Nock, Norman Klassen, and Jens Zimmermann
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 79 — FEATURED GUESTS: Carson Holloway, Peter Augustine Lawler, Hadley Arkes, Ben Witherington, III, Christopher Shannon, and Roger Lundin
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 71 — FEATURED GUESTS: Peter Augustine Lawler, David Koyzis, Roger Lundin, Craig Gay, Steven Rhoads, and R. Larry Todd
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 51 — FEATURED GUESTS: Nigel Cameron, David Blankenhorn, Robert Wuthnow, Mortimer Adler, Roger Lundin, Dana Gioia, Mary Midgely, and Ted Libbey
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 48 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jon Butler, Gary Cross, Zygmunt Bauman, Pico Iyer, Richard Stivers, Larry Woiwode, Alan Jacobs, and James Trott
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 20 — FEATURED GUESTS: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Roger Lundin, Wilfred McClay, Andrew A. Tadie, Robert Jenson, Ted Prescott, and Ted Libbey
- The Public Poetry of W. H. Auden — Alan Jacobs explains why W. H. Auden returned to the Church after recognizing that liberal humanism had no answers to the problem of human evil. (58 minutes)