Poetry Philosophy Great Books
Steve Knepper is a poet, scholar, and editor who teaches at Virginia Military Institute
New Verse Review
A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry
Journal Website/Substack Newsletter
In 2024, Steve Knepper founded New Verse Review, an online journal of poetry and criticism dedicated to renewing "the ancient affinities among poetry, song, and story." NVR has quickly become a prominent journal, especially for poetry written in rhyme and meter. It has published leading contemporary poets, such as Ned Balbo, Jared Carter, Midge Goldberg, Rachel Hadas, Ernest Hilbert, Jenna Le, Sydney Lea, Amit Majmudar, Shane McCrae, Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, Jane Satterfield, Alexis Sears, Matthew Buckley Smith, Sally Thomas, James Matthew Wilson, and Marly Youmans. NVR has also helped launch the career of exciting young poets, providing several of them with their first publication. Dana Gioia recently called NVR “an important new critical forum for American poetry.”
Selected Writings and Media
A Handful of Poems
"Season of Peonies" at Pulsebeat
"Askesis in the Wild" at Amethyst Review
"The Dungeon Master" at Lighten Up Online
"Abandoned Well Filled In with Stones" and "With the Boys at the Shade Gap Picnic" at The Brazen-Head
"Lost Sock Dreams" and "Metal Love Song" at Trampoline (scroll down for Steve's poems)
"Shade Valley Wonder Guild" at Autumn Sky Poetry
"The Hummingbird and Rembrandt's Saul" at The Ekphrastic Review
"Doubts" at Alabama Literary Review
"March Morning" at Autumn Sky Poetry
"October Twilight" at First Things
"Miles to Go" and "The Praying Drunk" at Rappahannock Review
"A Trail of Flints" at Roanoke Review
"The Storytellers" and "Trespasses" at Steel Toe Review
"Breech" at GLASS
A Few Essays and Reviews
"(Somewhat) Against 'Selected Poems'" at New Verse Review
"Five Ways to Read Byung-Chul Han" at The Philosopher
"Gadfly Graffiti" at Front Porch Republic
"King Lear: The Virtues that Come from Nothing" at VoegelinView
"Forgotten Realms" at The Lamp
"Red Dragonflies: On Byung-Chul Han" at The Lamp
"Nature's Haunted House" at The Lamp
"Thank Them Now" at The Lamp
"Art is the best interpreter of art" at Dappled Things
"When Wonder Strikes: William Desmond's Metaphysics of Excess" at Church Life Journal
"Attention and the Screen-Sick Soul" at Church Life Journal
"Men in the Fields: On the Farming Stories of Leo L. Ward, C.S.C." at Front Porch Republic
"Saving String, Kicking Leaves: Donald Hall's Elegies" at Front Porch Republic
"From Problem to Mystery: The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel" at Commonweal
"Jane Kenyon's Peonies" at Commonweal
Some Podcast Appearances
"Positive Violence, and the Palliative Society: A Modern Philosopher's Ideas for Making Sense of the Present Age" at Art of Manliness
"The Idiocy of Being" at Dia-Logos
"Wonder Strikes" at Dia-Logos
"The Palliative Society" at Hermitix
"The Spirit of Hope" at Hermitix
"Byung-Chul Han: A Critical Introduction" at Acid Horizon
"Byung-Chul Han, Boredom, and the Human" at Hermitix
"Faith and Wonder" at Faith and Imagination
"Cultivating Wonder" at Davood Gozli's podcast
"William Desmond and the Bible" at Theology Mill
"Saving Beauty" at Psyche
"Gabriel Marcel, Embodiment, and Being" at Hermitix
"William Desmond and the Excess of Being" at Hermitix
Books
Byung-Chul Han: A Critical Introduction
Co-authored by Steven Knepper
Purchase from Polity Press or Amazon
Byung-Chul Han is one of the most important living philosophers, renowned for his critiques of the digital age. In response to the idea that new technological devices expand our freedom, he argues that they lead to burnout and self-absorption and that we must redevelop contemplative practices which slow us down and open us up. He has brought to his thought forms of deep cosmopolitanism developed from both Zen Buddhism and a renewed Romanticism.
This book is the first critical introduction to Han’s body of work. Knepper, Stoneman, and Wyllie explore Han’s rich oeuvre to date and his incisive contributions to a range of disciplines, including critical theory, media studies, political philosophy, and aesthetics. They unpack his key terms and illustrate his concepts with a range of examples, revealing how the critiques of the “achievement society” and burnout, which have earned Han a global audience, build on his earlier accounts of power, violence, and mood. This broader view addresses the most frequent criticisms of Han and makes a compelling case that he is not only an insightful diagnostician of the present moment but one whose interpretation of both Western and Eastern traditions offers wisdom for navigating the now acute problems of modernity.
This lively book is essential reading for anyone getting to grips with Han’s extraordinary work.
Books
A Heart of Flesh: William Desmond and the Bible
Edited by Steven Knepper
Purchase from Wipf & Stock or Amazon
The Irish philosopher William Desmond is one of the most compelling and adventurous Christian thinkers of our time. The essays gathered here undertake a journey through the Bible with Desmond that ranges across biblical theology, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, political theory, and literary studies. Some of the essays examine the place of the Bible in Desmond's thought, considering his readings of the creation, the Abraham cycle, and the Beatitudes. Other essays bring Desmond's ideas to bear on broad questions that emerge from the Bible about philosophy and revelation, exegesis, theopoetics, eschatology, and tyranny. Still others bring Desmond into conversation with influential philosophers who engage (or conspicuously do not engage) the Bible, such as Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Tillich. Together, these essays show the rich possibilities of approaching the Bible with Desmond. All take their bearings from Desmond's "metaxological" approach, which does not seek to claim the final word, which attends to the text rather than simply imposing on it, and which allows for an ongoing dialogue.
Books
Wonder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond
Authored by Steven Knepper
Purchase from SUNY Press or Amazon
The first book-length examination of the prominent contemporary philosopher William Desmond's approach to aesthetics, art, and literature.
William Desmond argues that philosophy, religion, and art begin in wonder. Desmond is widely recognized for his original metaphysics and his provocative philosophy of religion. Desmond's extensive writings on aesthetics, art, and literature, however, have received much less attention. Wonder Strikes is the first book-length examination of these dimensions of Desmond's thought. It offers nuanced commentary on his treatment of beauty and the sublime; his accounts of tragedy and comedy; and his argument that, having asked "too much" of art in modernity, we now ask "too little." Desmond claims that art, philosophy, and religion must recover their ancient kinship and their shared roots in wonder if they are to counter the destructive instrumentalism of our time.
Contact Steve
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