The Catholic Culture Podcast: 102 – Becoming Cultured Without a Bow Tie

Apr 5, 2021

Poet-philosopher James Matthew Wilson returns to the show to
read poems from his new collection, The Strangeness of the
Good, including his “Quarantine Notebook” series, and to
discuss the decay and renewal of Catholic intellectual life.

Topics discussed include:

• The present narrowing of Catholic intellectual life in
  conservative/traditional circles

• How do you become cultured, in an authentic and non-pretentious
  way, when you’re not participating in a culture?

• His ideal approach to reciting poetry

• The poets we most need to be reading now

• What needs to be done to build on the work in Catholic
  aesthetics done by figures like Maritain, Hildebrand, and
  Gilson

• What it’s like to be an orthodox Catholic teaching at a merely
  nominally Catholic university
• Trying to get through to college freshmen who think they
  already know that there’s no value in the Western patrimony,
  there’s no truth, and life is meaningless

Watch this interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ip02uvHlvck

Note: This interview was recorded before James Matthew Wilson
announced his appointment as founding director of a new MFA in
Creative Writing, at the University of St. Thomas, Houston (in
collaboration with multiple past Catholic Culture Podcast guests,
particularly Joshua Hren of Wiseblood Books). Learn about the
program here:
https://www.stthom.edu/public/index.asp?AQ_Action=getPageByURL&AQ_URL=/Academics/School-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Division-of-Liberal-Studies/Graduate/Master-of-Fine-Arts-in-Creative-Writing/Index.aqf

Links

The Strangeness of the Good
https://www.amazon.com/Strangeness-Good-Including-Quarantine-Notebook/dp/1621386325/

All interviews with James Matthew Wilson
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-tePYzIXOsQ2OgM0Bh-Nq1LUpYF2877q