What Comes from a Thing has been described by reviewers as "a masterpiece of phenomenological description in which poetry is not application or a technique for profundity but instead at the heart of philosophical/poetic evocation"[8] and as "laments of postindustrial despair, isolation, and ecological ruin."[9] Through both poetry and philosophy, Barron challenges traditional conceptions of
personal identity, reframing identity as a distributed phenomenon "that comes through the tension between the artificial and the untouched."[10][11]
He was the founding editor of the poetry journal OccuPoetry, an online literary journal which documented poetry and art of the
Occupy Movement.[12] He is a member of the
Community of Writers poetry workshop, and he edited the 2012 issue of the Squaw Valley Review.[13]
Barron has been cited as an expert on
sexism and capital punishment[14][15][16] for a 2000 article titled "Gender Discrimination in the US Death Penalty System".[17] In 2013, he appeared on a
HuffPost Live segment on gender discrimination in the death penalty.[18]
^MisirHiralall, Sabrina D. (6 December 2019).
"APA Member Interview: Phillip Barron". Blog of the APA. American Philosophical Association. Retrieved 2 February 2020.