===Christian Wiman===
- Apple Books - On Being -
Christian Wiman is an American poet and editor born in 1966 and raised in the small west Texas town of Snyder. He graduated from Washington and Lee University and has taught at Northwestern University, Stanford University, Lynchburg College in Virginia, and the Prague School of Economics. In 2003, he became editor of the oldest American magazine of verse, Poetry, a role he stepped down from in June 2013. Wiman is now on the faculty of Yale University, where he teaches courses on Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. In his book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Essays Against Despair (2023), he reflects deeply on what it means to confront reality as it is. This takes him to an existential field beyond conventional belief and conventional doubt.
CHRISTIAN WIMAN PUSHES BACK AGAINST DESPAIR
IN HIS LATEST book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, Christian Wiman is not concerned with suspense. Two paragraphs into his first “entry against despair,” he discloses the fiercest nemesis of that tried-and-true doom and gloom. “The only true antidote to the plague of modern despair is an absolute — and perhaps even annihilating — awe,” he writes. That’s probably why Wiman, writer, translator, and professor of communication arts at Yale Divinity School, begins Zero at the Bone by mining the wisdom of the world’s biggest experts on awe: children. His latest collection leans on the “visionary innocence” of a child “whose unwilled wonder erases any distinction between her days and her dreams.” Wiman has had daily access to two such visionaries: his twin daughters Eliza and Fiona. Unfortunately, he has also had steady access to despair, most visibly through his 19-year battle with a rare, aggressive form of bone cancer. He is currently in remission. (Sojourners June 2024) READ MORE>>>>>
IN HIS LATEST book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, Christian Wiman is not concerned with suspense. Two paragraphs into his first “entry against despair,” he discloses the fiercest nemesis of that tried-and-true doom and gloom. “The only true antidote to the plague of modern despair is an absolute — and perhaps even annihilating — awe,” he writes. That’s probably why Wiman, writer, translator, and professor of communication arts at Yale Divinity School, begins Zero at the Bone by mining the wisdom of the world’s biggest experts on awe: children. His latest collection leans on the “visionary innocence” of a child “whose unwilled wonder erases any distinction between her days and her dreams.” Wiman has had daily access to two such visionaries: his twin daughters Eliza and Fiona. Unfortunately, he has also had steady access to despair, most visibly through his 19-year battle with a rare, aggressive form of bone cancer. He is currently in remission. (Sojourners June 2024) READ MORE>>>>>
Imaginative Conservative: Intending the Unintended
Teachers are guides, clearly, and the question is which kind of guide one will be. On Wednesday of this week, freshmen at Wyoming Catholic College began classes for the first time, and it is natural to consider what we hope for them to see in an education like ours—what we intend. How much intending should we do for them? I was struck a week or so ago by some lines in a poem by A.R. Ammons, whom Christian Wiman praises for a pervasive spiritual openness despite his apparent lack of religion. “I go to nature,” Ammons writes, “not because/its flowers and sunsets speak/to me (though they do) or/listen to me inquire but//because I have filled it with/unintentionality, so that I/can miss anything personal in/the roar of sunset, so that//I can in beds of flowers hold/ my head up too.” 8.6.22
Teachers are guides, clearly, and the question is which kind of guide one will be. On Wednesday of this week, freshmen at Wyoming Catholic College began classes for the first time, and it is natural to consider what we hope for them to see in an education like ours—what we intend. How much intending should we do for them? I was struck a week or so ago by some lines in a poem by A.R. Ammons, whom Christian Wiman praises for a pervasive spiritual openness despite his apparent lack of religion. “I go to nature,” Ammons writes, “not because/its flowers and sunsets speak/to me (though they do) or/listen to me inquire but//because I have filled it with/unintentionality, so that I/can miss anything personal in/the roar of sunset, so that//I can in beds of flowers hold/ my head up too.” 8.6.22
Christian Wiman
“Faith is nothing more – but how much this is – than a motion of the soul toward God. It is not belief. Belief has objects – Christ was resurrected, God created the earth – faith does not. Even the motion of faith is mysterious and inexplicable: I say the soul moves “toward” God, but that is only the limitation of language. It may be God who moves, the soul that opens for him. Faith is faith in the soul.”
— Christian Wiman
July 7, 2021: Union Springs Herald: Brokenness
The poet Christian Wiman wrote this line: "God goes belonging to every riven thing he's made." The word "riven" is an old-fashioned word that means to tear apart violently. In a similar vein the poet William Butler Yeats wrote: "nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent." The writer Ernest Hemingway wrote this line: "The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places."
The poet Christian Wiman wrote this line: "God goes belonging to every riven thing he's made." The word "riven" is an old-fashioned word that means to tear apart violently. In a similar vein the poet William Butler Yeats wrote: "nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent." The writer Ernest Hemingway wrote this line: "The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places."
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Jan 7, 2020: Faith & Leadership: Christian Wiman: Making art is an expression of faith
The poet and former editor of Poetry magazine asked the question in the fallout of a cancer diagnosis that led him back to Christianity, but the question’s ongoing pertinence for the church and the world -- whose flames have only gotten higher since the book was published in 2013 -- is clear.
The poet and former editor of Poetry magazine asked the question in the fallout of a cancer diagnosis that led him back to Christianity, but the question’s ongoing pertinence for the church and the world -- whose flames have only gotten higher since the book was published in 2013 -- is clear.
Jan 4, 2018: On Being: Christian WimanHow Does One Remember God?
The poet Christian Wiman is giving voice to the hunger and challenge of being religious now. He had a charismatic Texas Christian upbringing, and was later agnostic. He became actively religious again as he found love in his mid 30s, and was diagnosed with cancer. He’s written, “How does one remember God, reach for God, realize God in the midst of one’s life if one is constantly being overwhelmed by that life?”
The poet Christian Wiman is giving voice to the hunger and challenge of being religious now. He had a charismatic Texas Christian upbringing, and was later agnostic. He became actively religious again as he found love in his mid 30s, and was diagnosed with cancer. He’s written, “How does one remember God, reach for God, realize God in the midst of one’s life if one is constantly being overwhelmed by that life?”
Mar 24, 2015: Western Theological Seminary: A Poet & A Theologian Talk About Incurable Cancer
An Evening with Christian Wiman and Dr. J. Todd Billings
An Evening with Christian Wiman and Dr. J. Todd Billings
Jan 21, 2015: Oxford American: THE SOUL OF THINGS GOES
I had recently read Christian Wiman’s latest poetry collection, Once in the West, for the first time when I glanced at my housemate’s copy of The Library of America’s American Sermons one Saturday afternoon while eating lunch. I stopped on Phillips Brooks’s 1890 sermon “The Seriousness of Life” because of the seriousness of its title.
I had recently read Christian Wiman’s latest poetry collection, Once in the West, for the first time when I glanced at my housemate’s copy of The Library of America’s American Sermons one Saturday afternoon while eating lunch. I stopped on Phillips Brooks’s 1890 sermon “The Seriousness of Life” because of the seriousness of its title.
Oct 17, 2014: Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church: Christian Wiman’s Next Great Book
Christian Wiman's new volume of poetry, Once in the West, appeared in September, and the reviews suggest another triumph for FAPC's soon-to-be guest author.
July 21, 2014: Commonweal: George Eliot, Thomas a Kempis, and Christian Wiman
And then came the other connected realization, for I had the book on the train with me as well, that Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss is a latter day a Kempis. (Wiman was interviewed by Commonweal in the May 2, 2014 issue.) “Meditation of a Modern Believer,” the book’s subtitle, indicates the focus and the intensity of the thought.
Christian Wiman's new volume of poetry, Once in the West, appeared in September, and the reviews suggest another triumph for FAPC's soon-to-be guest author.
July 21, 2014: Commonweal: George Eliot, Thomas a Kempis, and Christian Wiman
And then came the other connected realization, for I had the book on the train with me as well, that Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss is a latter day a Kempis. (Wiman was interviewed by Commonweal in the May 2, 2014 issue.) “Meditation of a Modern Believer,” the book’s subtitle, indicates the focus and the intensity of the thought.
Mar 25, 2014: Internet Monk: Christian Wiman: Religious Despair as Defense
During my weekend at Gethsemani, some of the most insightful reading I did came from Christian Wiman’s luminous book, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer.
During my weekend at Gethsemani, some of the most insightful reading I did came from Christian Wiman’s luminous book, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer.
Mar 24, 2014: Huffington Post: Review of Christian Wiman's 'My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer'
Wiman refuses to hector or preach down to anyone---be they believers, doubters, or atheists. He treats his readers like grown-ups. His purpose is speak clearly about what he believes.
Wiman refuses to hector or preach down to anyone---be they believers, doubters, or atheists. He treats his readers like grown-ups. His purpose is speak clearly about what he believes.
INTERVIEW WITH POET, CHRISTIAN WIMAN November 25, 2013 Insightful interview that touches on a poets take on faith, inspiration, cancer, life, etc.
2012
Dec 7, 2012: Christianity Today: Exclusive: Christian Wiman Discusses Faith as He Leaves World's Top Poetry Magazine
In the afternoon of his 39th birthday, less than a year after his wedding day, poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable cancer of the blood. Wiman, who announced Wednesday that he will step down in June as editor of Poetry magazine, the oldest and most esteemed poetry monthly in the world, had long ago drifted away from the Southern Baptist beliefs of his upbringing. But the shock of staring death in the face gradually revived a faith that had gone dormant (a story he first told publicly in a 2007 article for The American Scholar).
Wiman's new book of essays, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), took shape in the wake of his diagnosis, when he believed death could be fast approaching. These writings come from someone who is less a cautious theologian than a pilgrim crying out from the depths. They divulge the God-ward hopes (and doubts) of an artist still piecing together a spiritual puzzle. San Francisco-based lawyer and author Josh Jeter corresponded with Wiman about his new book, his precarious health, and the ongoing challenge of belief in God.
In the afternoon of his 39th birthday, less than a year after his wedding day, poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable cancer of the blood. Wiman, who announced Wednesday that he will step down in June as editor of Poetry magazine, the oldest and most esteemed poetry monthly in the world, had long ago drifted away from the Southern Baptist beliefs of his upbringing. But the shock of staring death in the face gradually revived a faith that had gone dormant (a story he first told publicly in a 2007 article for The American Scholar).
Wiman's new book of essays, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), took shape in the wake of his diagnosis, when he believed death could be fast approaching. These writings come from someone who is less a cautious theologian than a pilgrim crying out from the depths. They divulge the God-ward hopes (and doubts) of an artist still piecing together a spiritual puzzle. San Francisco-based lawyer and author Josh Jeter corresponded with Wiman about his new book, his precarious health, and the ongoing challenge of belief in God.
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Sept 13, 2012: Readers Almanac: Dawn McGuire on Christian Wiman, Ambition and Survival, and dying too young
Dawn McGuire, neurologist and poet, who recently published her third collection of poems, The Aphasia Café (IF SF Publishing), joins our continuing series of guest blog posts by writers of fiction, poetry, essays, and history with an appreciation of the prose of poet and critic Christian Wiman. |
For Wiman,“Faith is not a state of mind but an action in the world, a movement toward the world.” This is probably why we can find a chemo-bald, slightly fragile Wiman “in the world,” talking about God with Bill Moyers. He speaks with simple clarity, without a hint of the distancing ironies, or the “willed immaturity” of his past. He sounds real, as in realized. This faith as movement toward the world is also “why” we find Wiman writing a different kind of poem, a masterpiece that is both profound and completely accessible. The poem takes place on a porch. It is a praise poem, for junk, a neighbor, the everyday. The mystery. It suggests how close God was all along. Just “Five Houses Down.” |
| Christian Wiman graduated from Washington and Lee University and has taught at Northwestern University, Stanford University, Lynchburg College in Virginia, and the Prague School of Economics. In 2003, he became editor of the oldest American magazine of verse, Poetry, a role he stepped down from in June 2013. Wiman now teaches literature and religion at Yale Divinity School. His first book of poetry, The Long Home, (Copper Canyon Press, 1998) won the Nicholas Roerich Prize. His 2010 book, Every Riven Thing (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), was chosen by poet and critic Dan Chiasson as one of the best poetry books of 2010. His book Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) reviewed by The New York Times Sunday Book Review, is "a collection of personal essays and critical prose on a wide range of subjects: reading Paradise Lost in Guatemala, recalling violent episodes from the poet's youth, traveling in Africa with an eccentric father, as well as a series of penetrating essays on poets, poetry, and poetry's place in our lives. The book concludes with a portrait of Wiman's diagnosis with a rare cancer, and a clear-eyed declaration of what it means — for an artist and a person — to have faith in the face of death."
His poems, criticism, and personal essays appear widely in such magazines as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker. Clive James describes Wiman’s poems as being “insistent on being read aloud, in a way that so much from America is determined not to be. His rhymes and line-turnovers are all carefully placed to intensify the speech rhythms, making everything dramatic: not shoutingly so, but with a steady voice that tells an ideal story every time. |