James Matthew Wilson

James Matthew Wilson
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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.

Recent Essays

Sonnets of Deracination

Devon, PA.  Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry has been one of the few consistently good poetry journals since it began publication in 2006,...

The Insidious Logic of Liberalism

Tucson, AZ.  This Arizona Daily Star paragraph greeted me as I began the annual family vacation in Tucson.  Rather than offering full commentary, I shall...

Formal Augustinian Revenges

Devon, PA.  A few years ago, Jason Peters swore Learical revenges on me for reprinting a poem of mine on the debauchery of Michigan...

An Open Letter to Karen Heller

Devon, PA.  Cursed with a lousy city newspaper rife with good coupons, I sat down with my coffee this morning to read Karen Heller's...

Dark Places and Dappled Things

Devon, PA.  The Catholic magazine of arts and letters, Dappled Things, is no stranger to the writers of FPR, having published a debate on...

“Even mainstream Democrats have no time for Mr. Paul . . .”

Devon, PA. We face only two feasible policies in America's engagement with the world.  We can seek to be a bomb-throwing hegemon until the money, and...

Catholic Universities, Protestant Ministries, and the Purpose of Education

Devon, PA.  Last week, Villanova University's Office of Mission and Ministry invited several faculty members to speak about the contributions of their religious faith...

FPR at Notre Dame This Week

Devon, PA.  As I announced some months back, Front Porch Republic will return to the University of Notre Dame this week to participate in...

Catholic Teaching and Global Political Authority

Devon, PA.  Peter Haworth has rightly drawn our attention to the new Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace document, "Towards Reforming the International Financial...

Nihilism or Idolatry

Devon, PA.  The latest issue of the Intercollegiate Review is out, including my review of All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find...

Citizenship, Localism, and Catholicism

Devon, PA. For months now, I have been sitting on an incomplete draft of a series of essays on "Localism and the Universal Church,"...

Place. Limits. Grottos. FPR at Notre Dame

Devon, PA.  I am pleased to report that FPR will once again hold a roundtable discussion at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and...