James Matthew Wilson
James Matthew Wilson is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions at Villanova University.
Articles by James Matthew Wilson
The Locality of the Church. Or, Where’s Wilson?
Such is the wisdom of James Matthew Wilson that it appears a jewel precious in the eyes of Jason Peters. This Peters will embarrass and pester and spout folk wisdom, and then engage…
The Trouble With Goodness
This last September, the Future Symphony Institute invited me to address its first annual conference on some of the philosophical problems in our age that make it difficult for the…
Some Permanent Things In Print
In an endnote to The Idea of a Christian Society, T.S. Eliot makes this categorical claim: Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline;…
The Good Man Must Himself Be a True Poem
The M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame has just published an interview with me as part of its alumni series. There, I get to reflect…
The Violent and the Fallen On the Airwaves
Holy Family Radio in Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently aired John Pinheiro's interview with me on his weekly program, Faith and Reason. Pinheiro asked me to discuss my new book, The…
“Standard Oil” Catholicism
Berwyn, PA. The American Conservative has just published the online version of my review of Suitable Accommodations, a selected letters of the Catholic fiction writer, J.F. Powers. Powers' stories still…
Despair, Delight, and the Decentered Self
Berwyn, PA. The Fine Delight Interview Series with Catholic authors, conducted by the author of the book of the same name, Nick Ripatrazone, has just posted its latest interview --…
Come and Hear, or Read, “The Violent and the Fallen”
My second collection of poems, The Violent and the Fallen, is now available on amazon.com, and directly from the publisher. Those interested may also write directly to fourverseletters@gmail.com to order one of only seven signed sets…
In Praise of Mediocrity
Berwyn, PA. Everyone knows G.K. Chesterton's aphorism that, if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. Dappled Things writer Karen Ullo has deepened our understanding of that…
What You Need to Know about Dana Gioia
Dana Gioia has spent his career making metaphors: drawing disparate things together to reveal the breadth and depth of aesthetic experience, but doing so in a way that has frequently…
Of Vision and Discipline
After six years absence, I have just published a review essay in the great Contemporary Poetry Review, one of the first important internet critical journals. The review is of two new…
Poems about God
I'm in the middle of writing a short essay on John Crowe Ransom's first book, Poems about God (1919). In his early poems even more obviously than in the later…