with David Mahan

Dr. Mischa Willett is Assistant Professor of English and Writing at Seattle Pacific University, specializing in 19th century British Literature, particularly the aesthetics of the Romantics (along with the “Spasmodics”). He is also the editor of Philip James Bailey’s Festus, and the author of numerous scholarly essays. As a poet he has published two critically acclaimed collections of verse, Phases (Cascade Books 2017) and The Elegy Beta (Mockingbird Ministries 2020). To visit his website go to https://www.mischawillett.com/.

DM: Thank you, Mischa, for your availability to talk about your work. Our readers are lovers of literature, and it’s always great to hear from practicing writers whose art expresses a literary vision that inspires our thinking and understanding.

MW: Oh you’re so welcome; thanks for having me.

DM: In her essay of this title Denise Levertov once described her poetry as “work that enfaiths,” tracing out the interaction of content and form and the dynamic relationship between her own religious experiences and perceptions and what appears on the page. She tellingly affirms that relationship by drawing an analogy “between the journey of art and the journey of faith,” adding “Every work of art is ‘an act of faith’ .” Do you think of your own work as a poet in these terms, or how would you describe that relationship between your own poetry and religious faith, whether your own or others’?

MW: What a beautiful coinage! “Enfaiths” is perfect. So is “work,” come to that. I love Denise Levertov; I have several of her books, actually. Not books that she wrote (although those too) but books that used to belong to her. She was a local, and when she passed, much of her library ended up in a used bookstore I frequent. We must have similar taste: often I’ll reach for a volume on those shelves only to find her nameplate and signature on the inside cover.

She’s also right, I think, about the work of art as an act of faith. I think all modern artists would have to concede something like that, even if they don’t count themselves religious. You set the kindling in a pile and pray that the god lights it up…you walk between the towers on a wire hoping you won’t fall. Every time I finish a poem, I whisper a little “hallelujah;” I just can’t believe it happened again.

DM: You speak of exploring the “pliability of formal structures in making verse.” Can you elaborate what you mean by this, perhaps again in light of your faith?

MW: Part of this may be just my own sinful tendencies, and part may be growing up listening to punk music in Generation X, but there’s a rebel in me whose every instinct is to knock things down. In poetry, that means that when I learn, for instance, that the sestina lends itself to long lines (thereby to bury the repeated words and phrases), I think, ‘I wonder how short I could possibly make them?’ ending up with a sestina with two and three-word lines.

But this turns out to be a religious, or at least an ecclesial/liturgical, question for me too. The church is the form, the liturgy is a rhyme scheme. For me, both as a poet and as a Christian, I want those rails in order to keep the car on the road. In both cases, I find that there’s more freedom possible, greater risk and greater joy, within such structures than there could ever be without them. I’d be too busy inventing the laws of physics, summoning the floor beneath me like some misguided Magneto to actually do any interesting moves.

DM: Who are some of the poets you most admire who have most influenced your own work as a ‘poet of faith’?

MW: Scott Cairns and Andrew Hudgins for sure; Richard Wilbur, even James Merrill, which is strange to say given that he was an occultist and certainly outside the faith, but his supernaturalism and openness and of course his formal proficiency have been models for me. Who else? Kelly Cherry, Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Rilke, obviously.

DM: It’s interesting that you mention Merrill and Rilke in this list, with that qualification. It has become a principled position among other colleagues and I that a Christian artist as well as a Christian scholar looks to receive from those who do not share our faith, that the ‘boundary crossings’ (to quote Rowan Williams) that we seek to make actually move in both directions. Are there other ways that poets such as Merrill and Rilke have influenced your own faith understanding when it comes to your artistic vision?

MW: Absolutely. Rilke, for instance, clearly believes that poem-making is a holy act and that in some ways it comes as a gift; he might call it a gift of “the silence,” or some such thing, but we’re not very far apart on that score. Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God is just about the greatest devotional work I know. And Merrill comes at the otherworldly through a Ouija board but you know what he finds when he “gets there” through seances? When he peeks behind the curtain? Angels and archangels with names like “Raphael,” which is to say: the basic Christian metaphysical architecture is still in place, even approached through that dark avenue.

DM: That’s a really intriguing read of both these works. I need to look again at the Rilke. (I also just got his The Life of the Virgin Mary.) Thinking still about influences, one of the obvious challenges for poets of any outlook is connecting with their audience(s). It seems that religious poets may feel this challenge more acutely, some perhaps not wanting to be identified this way at all. How do you think about the people you write for – or is this even on your mind?

MW: For a long time this question worried me, more as a scholar than as a poet. I taught for eight years at the University of Washington in a city not indifferent toward but actively hostile to people of faith. There are essays I didn’t write and venues I didn’t write for because I didn’t want to box myself out of a job. Then I started writing reviews for Books and Culture, which had a great community of readers around it, and I’d always been reading Image Magazine and I just…wanted to talk about things that matter. Now, the Christian literary world is the only one that matters to me. I mean, I hope people outside the church find and appreciate some things I’m doing (and I know many of them do) but the only reason I make things is for the glory of God and the health of his church.

DM: Because our readers include scholars and writers alike, and many who, like you, are both, I’m curious to hear what connections you see between your academic work and your art? How do these complement or enhance each other, or are there ways that they compete?

MW: Well, I’m lucky in a sense, since I work, as a scholar, on poetry. I try to write poems in the morning, then I go and teach students either to write or to interpret poems, maybe I’ll work on editing a volume of someone else’s poems, all the while conjuring new angles of interpretation or theories of coherence across poetic schools, or some such thing. But still, there isn’t that much overlap. It isn’t as though I read Keats and find inspiration for my own work or anything like that; one of the first things young writers need to learn is how not to sound like the Romantics, so in a way, it’s dangerous for me to spend so much time there.

DM: What are you working on now? Are there new collections that we should be looking for?

MW: I just held the Festus volume for the first time last week. It’s a poem I’d rank just after Dante, Milton, and Eliot in terms of theological importance. It’s the best theological poetry most people haven’t read. So, I’m doing some shorter pieces related to that. Then, I’m working on a book about gratitude and the miraculous, the necessity of not only remembering but retelling the story of God’s wonders. After that, a big monograph about the Spasmodics that I’ve been meaning to get to for years, but just couldn’t while the kids were young. And always poems.

DM: We look forward to seeing those works, and I definitely want to check out Bailey’s Festus with such a strong recommendation. Many thanks again for taking the time to share your reflections with us.

MW: Oh no, thank you, both for making this space and for the conversation. Pax Christi.

Mischa Willett

Assistant Professor of English and Writing, Seattle Pacific University
mwillett@spu.edu

David Mahan

Lecturer in Religion and Literature, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Yale Divinity School
Co-Director, Rivendell Center for Theology and the Arts
david.mahan@yale.edu