Christian Wiman – författare

Eight years ago, Christian Wiman, a well-known poet and the editor of Poetry magazine, wrote a now-famous essay about having faith in the face of death. My Bright Abyss, composed in the difficult years since and completed in the wake of a bone marrow transplant, is a moving meditation on what a viable contemporary faith—responsive not only to modern thought and science but also to religious tradition—might look like. Joyful, sorrowful, and beautifully written, My Bright Abyss is destined to become a spiritual classic, useful not only to believers but to anyone whose experience of life and art seems at times to overbrim its boundaries. How do we answer this "burn of being"? Wiman asks. What might it mean for our lives—and for our deaths—if we acknowledge the "insistent, persistent ghost" that some of us call God? One of Publishers Weekly's Best Religion Books of 2013

Christian Wiman braids poetry, memoir, and criticism to create an inspired, career-defining work. Few contemporary writers ask the questions about faith, morality, and God that Christian Wiman does, and even fewer—perhaps none—do so with his urgency and eloquence. Wiman, an award-winning poet and the author of My Bright Abyss, lays the motion of his mind on the page in this genre-defying work, an indivisible blend of poetry, criticism, theology, and searing memoir. As Marilynne Robinson wrote, “[Wiman’s] poetry and his scholarship have a purifying urgency that is rare in this world . . . [It] enables him to say new things in timeless language, so that the reader’s surprise and assent are one and the same.”Zero at the Bone begins with Wiman’s preoccupation with despair, and through fifty brief pieces, he unravels its seductive appeal. The book is studded with the poetry and prose of writers who inhabit Wiman’s thoughts, and the voices of Wallace Stevens, Lucille Clifton, Emily Dickinson, and others join his own. At its heart and Wiman’s, however, are his family—his young children (who ask their own invaluable questions, like “Why are you a poet? I mean why?”), his wife, and those he grew up with in West Texas. Wiman is the rare thinker who takes on the mantle of our greatest mystics and does so with an honest, profound, and contemporary sensibility. Zero at the Bone is a revelation.

A new book of poetry from the celebrated poet and essayist, who has "wrestled eternity onto the page" (The New York Times).Few contemporary writers ask the questions about faith, morality, and God that Christian Wiman does, and even fewer-perhaps none -do so with his urgency and eloquence. In his seventh book of poetry, The Dance, Wiman is at the height of his powers. These searching, sharp, wide-ranging poems are a testament to the staying power of a poetic voice we will be reading for years to come.

One of The New York Times'' 10 Favorite Poetry Books of 2014National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistA searing new collection from one of our country''s most important poetsMemories merciesmostly aren''tbut there wereI swear daysveined with grace—from "Memory''s Mercies"Once in the West, Christian Wiman''s fourth collection, is as intense and intimate as poetry gets—from the "suffering of primal silence" that it plumbs to the "rockshriek of joy" that it achieves and enables. Readers of Wiman''s earlier books will recognize the sharp characterizations and humor—"From her I learned the earthworm''s exemplary open-mindedness, / its engine of discriminate shit"—as well as his particular brand of reverent rage: "Lord if I implore you please just please leave me alone / is that a prayer that''s every instant answered?" But there is something new here, too: moving love poems to his wife, tender glimpses of his children, and, amid the onslaughts of illness and fear and failures, "a trace / of peace."

A luminous collection spanning three decades from one of America''s most acclaimed poetsChristian Wiman, hailed for his "daring and urgent" poetry (The New York Times Book Review), has forged a singular style that fuses vivid musicality, clear-eyed realism, wry humor, and visionary intensity. In his critically acclaimed memoir, My Bright Abyss, Wiman ponders poetry''s role in a world afire. Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems stands as a powerful response.From the taut forms of his early work to the jagged fluencies of his later collections, Hammer Is the Prayer showcases Wiman''s restless interrogations and slashing lyrical precision. Yet it also reveals his narrative gifts, as in "Five Houses Down" with its "wonder-cluttered porch" and "eyesore opulence," or the tragicomic figure in "Being Serious" who endures "the world''s idiocy / like a saint its pains."Curated by the author himself, this generous selection affirms Wiman''s place as an essential voice in contemporary poetry. Brimming with metaphysical urgency and a multifaceted spirit, Hammer Is the Prayer bears witness to the human experience in all its riven beauty.

A moving meditation on memory, oblivion, and eternity by one of our most celebrated poetsWhat is it we want when we can’t stop wanting? And how do we make that hunger productive and vital rather than corrosive and destructive? These are the questions that animate Christian Wiman as he explores the relationships between art and faith, death and fame, heaven and oblivion. Above all, He Held Radical Light is a love letter to poetry, filled with moving, surprising, and sometimes funny encounters with the poets Wiman has known. Seamus Heaney opens a suddenly intimate conversation about faith; Mary Oliver puts half of a dead pigeon in her pocket; A. R. Ammons stands up in front of an audience and refuses to read. He Held Radical Light is as urgent and intense as it is lively and entertaining—a sharp sequel to Wiman’s earlier memoir, My Bright Abyss.

Acclaimed Poet Christian Wiman''s Most Powerful Collection YetSurvival Is a Style, Christian Wiman''s first collection of new poems in six years, may be his best book yet. Named as a 2020 Book of the Year by The Times Literary Supplement, this stunning work showcases Wiman''s signature blend of musical and formal variety, with a voice that shifts seamlessly from tender and funny to fiercely mystical and savagely skeptical.In this extraordinary collection, readers will encounter moving elegies, sharp observations on modern American life, and expansive poems that deftly merge different modes of speech and thought. Wiman''s spiritual and religious insights are on full display, as he grapples with questions of God, faith, and the human experience in the twenty-first century.With its profound depth and range, Survival Is a Style solidifies Christian Wiman''s place as one of the most vital voices in contemporary American poetry. This is a collection destined to become a permanent part of the American literary landscape.

Seven years ago, Christian Wiman, a well-known poet and the editor of Poetry magazine, wrote a now-famous essay about having faith in the face of death. My Bright Abyss, composed in the difficult years since and completed in the wake of a bone marrow transplant, is a moving meditation on what a viable contemporary faith—responsive not only to modern thought and science but also to religious tradition—might look like.Joyful, sorrowful, and beautifully written, My Bright Abyss is destined to become a spiritual classic, useful not only to believers but to anyone whose experience of life and art seems at times to overbrim its boundaries. How do we answer this "burn of being"? Wiman asks. What might it mean for our lives—and for our deaths—if we acknowledge the "insistent, persistent ghost" that some of us call God? One of Publishers Weekly''s Best Religion Books of 2013

Make no mistake: Christian Wiman's poetic endeavors are ambitious. From the personal lyrics of solitude and loss to “Being Serious,” the long poem that concludes Hard Night, his poems examine emotions clearly, without sentimentality. A profound reverence for form and passion for poetry are evident in these artfully shaped poems that contain and find meaning in the unwieldy and inexplicable. Just as he is doing as the new editor of Poetry, Wiman makes intellectually and emotionally engaged writing accessible to an expanding audience of readers.

Christian Wiman is the author of two books and a widely published essayist and critic. He lives in Chicago, where he is editor of Poetry magazine.

Ambition and Survival is a collection of stirring personal essays and critical prose on a wide range of subjects: reading Milton in Guatemala, recalling violent episodes of his youth, and traveling in Africa with his eccentric father, as well as a series of penetrating essays on writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy and Janet Lewis. The book concludes with a portrait of Wiman's diagnosis of a rare form of incurable and lethal cancer, and how mortality reignited his religious passions.

When I was twenty years old I set out to be a poet. That sounds like I was a sort of frigate raising anchor, and in a way I guess I was, though susceptible to the lightest of winds. . . . When I read Samuel Johnson's comment that any young man could compensate for his poor education by reading five hours a day for five years, that's exactly what I tried to do, practically setting a timer every afternoon to let me know when the little egg of my brain was boiled. It's a small miracle that I didn't take to wearing a cape.

"That calling, at once religious, ethical, and aesthetic, is one that only a genuine poet can hear—and very few poets can explain it as compellingly as Mr. Wiman does. That gift is what makes Ambition and Survival, not just one of the best books of poetry criticism in a generation, but a spiritual memoir of the first order."—New York Sun

"This weighty first prose collection should inspire wide attention, partly because of Wiman's current job, partly because of his astute insights and partly because he mixes poetry criticism with sometimes shocking memoir...The collection's greatest strength comes in general ruminations on the writing, reading and judging poetry." —Publishers Weekly

"[Wiman is] a terrific personal essayist, as this new collection illustrates, with the command and instincts of the popular memoirist ... This is a brave and bracing book." —Booklist

"That calling, at once religious, ethical, and aesthetic, is one that only a genuine poet can hear—and very few poets can explain it as compellingly as Mr. Wiman does. That gift is what makes Ambition and Survival, not just one of the best books of poetry criticism in a generation, but a spiritual memoir of the first order." —New York Sun

"This weighty first prose collection should inspire wide attention, partly because of Wiman''s current job, partly because of his astute insights and partly because he mixes poetry criticism with sometimes shocking memoir ... The collection''s greatest strength comes in general ruminations on the writing, reading and judging poetry." —Publishers Weekly

"[Wiman is] a terrific personal essayist, as this new collection illustrates, with the command and instincts of the popular memoirist ... This is a brave and bracing book." —Booklist

“Blazing high style” is how The New York Times describes the prose of Christian Wiman, the young editor transforming Poetry, the country’s oldest literary magazine.

Ambition and Survival is a collection of stirring personal essays and critical prose on a wide range of subjects: reading Milton in Guatemala, recalling violent episodes of his youth, and traveling in Africa with his eccentric father, as well as a series of penetrating essays on writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy and Janet Lewis. The book concludes with a portrait of Wiman’s diagnosis of a rare form of incurable and lethal cancer, and how mortality reignited his religious passions.

When I was twenty years old I set out to be a poet. That sounds like I was a sort of frigate raising anchor, and in a way I guess I was, though susceptible to the lightest of winds. . . . When I read Samuel Johnson’s comment that any young man could compensate for his poor education by reading five hours a day for five years, that’s exactly what I tried to do, practically setting a timer every afternoon to let me know when the little egg of my brain was boiled. It’s a small miracle that I didn’t take to wearing a cape.

Christian Wiman is the editor of Poetry magazine. His poems and essays appear regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and The New York Times Book Review.