Once in the West: Poems - Paperback

by Christian Wiman (Author)

One of The New York Times' 10 Favorite Poetry Books of 2014

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

Winner of the 2015 Philosophical Society of Texas Award of Merit in Poetry

A searing new collection from one of our country's most important poets

Memories mercies
mostly aren't

but there were
I swear
days
veined 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."

Front Jacket

Praise for author Christian Wiman:

"[Wiman's] poetry and his scholarship have a purifying urgency that is rare in this world. This puts him at the very source of theology, and enables him to say new things in timeless language, so that the reader's surprise and assent are one and the same." --Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead

"Like the classic mystics, [Wiman] often resorts to a language of paradox to convey things that ordinary language can't ... Wiman speaks carefully but powerfully . . . The best that can come from contemplation of mortality, perhaps, is a kind of wisdom that can give others strength--not by answering questions, like those best-sellers which claim to tell you what happens after you see the white light, but by asking questions honestly . . . My Bright Abyss is a book that will give light and strength, even to those who find themselves unable to follow its difficult path." --Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker

Back Jacket

Praise for author Christian Wiman:

"[Wiman's] poetry and his scholarship have a purifying urgency that is rare in this world. This puts him at the very source of theology, and enables him to say new things in timeless language, so that the reader's surprise and assent are one and the same." --Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead

"Like the classic mystics, [Wiman] often resorts to a language of paradox to convey things that ordinary language can't ... Wiman speaks carefully but powerfully . . . The best that can come from contemplation of mortality, perhaps, is a kind of wisdom that can give others strength--not by answering questions, like those best-sellers which claim to tell you what happens after you see the white light, but by asking questions honestly . . . My Bright Abyss is a book that will give light and strength, even to those who find themselves unable to follow its difficult path." --Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker

Author Biography

Christian Wiman is the author of seven books, including a memoir, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (FSG, 2013); Every Riven Thing (FSG, 2010), winner of the Ambassador Book Award in poetry; and Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam. From 2003 to 2013, he was the editor of Poetry magazine. He currently teaches religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School. He lives in Connecticut.