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Front Porch Republic

Poetic Responses to Turmoil

Smith's poem has returned to my mind several times, especially in moments, like our current one, of cultural and political turmoil.

Building on Good Bones

I stood amongst bones bleached dry and white.
October 13, 2025

Confessions of a Bad Neighbor

They filled our shared porch with plants in beautiful stone pots.
October 10, 2025

News, Notes, & Podcasts

Jeffrey Bilbro
Newsletter Editor:
Jeffrey Bilbro
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A Great Gathering at Baylor

While I was talking with one Texan who was at her first FPR conference, she told me, "I think I've found my people."
October 15, 2025
Cultural Debris with Alan Cornett podcast artwork

Andrea Kirk Assaf on Lessons From the Stoics

My guest is my friend Andrea Kirk Assaf, whom I have known for, well, a few decades now. She is the author most recently of 365 Lessons From the Stoics…
October 15, 2025

The Gin Is Cold, but the Piano’s Hot: Songs About Bars

Bars, saloons, taverns, whoopie spots—we talk about them all this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, and I get to give one of my hackneyed theories about Cheers, too.…
October 13, 2025
A Farmer Reading His Paper. Photographed by George W. Ackerman, Coryell County, Texas, September 1931.

Oliver Anthony, Paul Kingsnorth, and Marce Catlett

Amber Lapp goes to Oliver Anthony’s Rural Revival and explores the conditions for genuine, constructive populism.
October 11, 2025
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More Articles

The Many Lives of Milton’s Paradise Lost

For anyone who endeavors to read or teach "Paradise Lost" for the first time, I could hardly imagine a better single-volume guide to the work’s author, context, themes, and significance.

Battle Above the Clouds

Returning home on any other evening, I might have noticed the gold leaf edges of the icons on the shelf smoldering from the sun through the window.

Reconciling Art and Nature: Wendell Berry’s New Novel

Wendell Berry has written a ninth Port William novel, and it is unlike any other in the set.
October 3, 2025

Eddington’s Warning to Screen-Addled Souls

Kudos to Ari Aster and his film "Eddington" for showing us the truth of what is happening to us in our social media saturated world.
October 1, 2025

Shallow and Hollow: Media’s Romance Problem

Deep down, humans not only want but also require enduring, stable relationships.
September 30, 2025

Restoration Rides the Bus

Crouched between reflective handrails and stained cloth seats holding the memories of seasons past, I encountered daily more humanity, more culture, and more reverent wisdom than perhaps ever before.
September 29, 2025

In Defense of Children’s Work

Apprenticeship, not exploitation—and why place still matters.
September 26, 2025

When Minors View Violence Online

When will we confront the reality that terrible things can be etched into our memories in milliseconds?
September 25, 2025

Of Branson and Belonging

Belonging cannot be immediately grasped, but it must be chosen little by little.
September 24, 2025

Midwest Roots, American Aspirations: Charlie Kirk’s Legacy

I pray Charlie’s old neighbors will keep the flags flying, the campus debates respectful, and their doors open to all visitors.
September 23, 2025

From the Archive

Spiritual Secession: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth

" None of your readers need me to tell them that the useful work is practical, particular, small and careful: to get away from screens as much as we can, get…
November 12, 2021

The Road Taken

Sometimes an important change becomes evident only in retrospect - not while it’s happening across quiet broken days alone in a house while autumn succumbs to shadow and cold.
November 5, 2021

Where Is Our Freedom to Exercise Sympathy?

The same things that happened to the family farms, and to farmers like my father, are now happening to the colleges, and to faculty like me.
October 30, 2020

The Art of Living an Examined Life

If human beings flourish from their inner core rather than in the realm of impact and results, then the inner work of learning is fundamental to human happiness, as far…
October 16, 2020

Cultivating the Skills that Freedom Requires in Matthew Crawford’s Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road

Human driving requires unending mutual predictions and constant accommodations for each other. It is in such experiences that we end up with something meaningful for life in the physical world…
October 7, 2020