After Twelve Years in the Desert

If I am not mistaken, I wrote the first pages of what would become Catholic Modernism and the Irish "Avant-Garde" during my first sabbatical, twelve years ago. It was the beginning of a long wandering through the desert, where the somewhat more mature James Matthew Wilson tried to show to his younger, more precocious self, how the patient and careful labor of scholarship is to be done. The result is a mammoth book that covers the whole life and work of three minor but distinctive poets: Thomas MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, and Denis Devlin. Along the way, one learns how profoundly the spirit of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Blaise Pascal could shape the modern poetic imagination. It is a book written for scholars, but also one that I hope will do two things: will provide an example for scholars of literature, philosophy, and theology as to how one can at once enter into the depths of a subject and yet simultaneously show to the casual reader why such subtleties of knowledge matter; will open the history of some fascinating characters to a lay readership.

I have five autographed copies of the books available for sale at $45 (including shipping). If you happen to be interested, just drop me a line via the contact page.

For those who do not have a fortune to drop on scholarly tomes, let me invite you to take a look at these items brought to you for free by way of the internet (free for you, but alas, you are the internet's product, I'm sorry to say . . . let not such diabolical thinking hinder your enjoyment!). Below, please find two essays on the southern poet and Catholic convert, John Finlay, as well as a new poem in The New Criterion, and, in the photo at bottom, another poem from the lovely new magazine Joie de Vivre​.

Please check back here often, or subscribe to my newsletter. I have some essays of a controversial stripe forthcoming not to mention news of yet another, long sojourning, book.

John Finlay's Poetics of the Incarnation

Catholicism and Gnosticism in the Work of John Finlay

Tucson Hospital, Waiting Room