Episode 36: The Realist Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz

In this episode, I am joined by Professor Thomas Pfau (Duke University) to discuss the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz.  We talk about his realism--i.e., his conviction that the task of poetry is to convey the truth by getting us to pay careful attention to reality.  We discuss his philosophical and theological influences--Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Weil--and how these show up in his poems.  For Milosz, poetry is the habit of accurate vision--we can only capture the real by looking.  Therefore poetry is not self-expression, but testimony or witness. Milosz, we agree, is a religious poet in that he seeks to affirm the world, to celebrate and marvel at the mystery of existence, even as he is keenly aware that the world is fallen and full of suffering and, in the end, not really our proper home.