The Imagination of Joseph Bottum

Joseph Bottum has long been known for his elegant prose style, omnivorous literary allusiveness, and cultural critic’s eye for what we know, what we think we know, and the sometimes embarrassing gap between those things. His decades of editorial work for The Weekly Standard and First Things guided both those organs through their great ages of growth from political and religious magazines to eclectic and spirited journals of cultural review. Less known is that Bottum’s first book was a collection of poems and that he has published poetry and songs here and there ever since. The Fall and Other Poems appeared in 2001; a book of songs, The Second Spring, in 2011; and now, two decades on, Bottum has published his second full-length collection, Spending the Winter.