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Local Beer, Rhyming Poets

Seven poets, including your humble author, descend upon Victory Brewing Company this coming Sunday to test the compatibility of Hops and Hopkins.
James Matthew WilsonNovember 29, 2010

Devon, PA. As some FPR readers may already have noted on the Appearances Page, I will be one of seven poets reading from their work at the Victory Brew Pub this Sunday afternoon.  For those of you who have not sampled the wares of this astonishingly ambitious and varied local brewery, the resonance of iambs and the echoes of rhyme in Downingtown this weekend should afford you opportunity.

Christine Yurick, the editor of Think literary journal, has organized the event, which features David Yezzi, editor of the New Criterion, Ernest Hilbert, formerly of Contemporary Poetry Review, of E-Verse Radio, and author of Sixty Sonnets, and several other poets whose work I greatly esteem (and have, for that matter, reviewed in various places).  It was kind of Christine to add Hilbert, April Lindner and myself in as two local poets.  Complete details for the event, including biographies and sample poems, can be found here.

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A stack of three Local Culture journals and the book 'Localism in the Mass Age'

James Matthew Wilson

James Matthew Wilson is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions at Villanova University. An award-winning scholar of philosophical-theology and literature, he has authored dozens of essays, articles, and reviews on subjects ranging from art, ethics, and politics, to meter and poetic form, from the importance of local culture to the nature of truth, goodness, and beauty. Wilson is also a poet and critic of contemporary poetry, whose work appears regularly in such magazines and journals as First Things, Modern Age, The New Criterion, Dappled Things, Measure, The Weekly Standard, Front Porch Republic, The Raintown Review, and The American Conservative. He has published five books, including most recently, a collection of poems, Some Permanent Things and a monograph, The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (both Wiseblood Books, 2014). Raised in the Great Lakes State, baptised in the parish of St. Thomas Aquinas, seasoned by summers on Lake Wawasee (Indiana), and educated under the Golden Dome, Wilson is scion of a family of Hoosiers dating back to the early nineteenth century, and an offspring of Southside Chicago Poles whose tavern kept the city wet through the Depression (and prohibition) years.  He now lives under the same sentence of reluctant exile as many another native son of the Midwest, but has dug himself in for good on the margins of the Main Line in Pennsylvania with his beautiful wife, dangerous daughter, and saintly sons. For information on Wilson's scholarship and a selection of his published work, click here. See books written and recommended by James Matthew Wilson.

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6 comments

  • Anonymous
    15 years ago

    I just learned of this little news article on the reading. Very nice:

    http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2010/12/03/news/doc4cf99c4dec55c920993017.txt?viewmode=fullstory

  • Anonymous
    15 years ago

    I should have added, Peters, that all the poets are going to recite their poems while drinking their beers, and the audience is asked to listen in a like position. So, God willing, all the verse will be entirely mediated by the suds. Unfortunately, that also means form and matter are one, and so you can’t have beer without getting belted by verses as well.

  • Joshua Lore
    15 years ago

    …every village has its smart ass… This sounds wonderful, if only I were back in PA. I wonder if the Publican of Philly will begin hosting such events at such venues?

    • Matt Chominski
      15 years ago

      It would certainly be nice for the Publican of Philly to put on events like this one. If you know of any philanthropists that would like to aid us in such endeavors please, as the Publican’s editor, send them my way. I do hope to do an edition on Philly-local beers though, and hope to attend on Sunday as well.

  • Jason Peters
    15 years ago

    Wilson: Can I just drink the beer, or do I have to listen to the poetry too?

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