Christian Wiman

1 month ago | plough.com | Christian Wiman

Read Among the monks was one who kept apart. A gifted pray-er, they said of him, who sensed my faith was mostly faith in art. A man of fluent, fasted absencesthat from his tongue would come as scalding psalms,then yearlong silences of solid God. A keeper of the ancient ways, they said,(which I took to mean insane) who gleanedbetween the hapless captive and the called;and that no richer privilege could befalla muddled soul than to receive his blessing.

1 month ago | plough.com | Christian Wiman

This interview was conducted by Plough’s Joy Clarkson on January 24, 2025. Plough: You’ve written more than a handful of books of poetry. What is the work of the poet? Christian Wiman: That depends on the poet. But if there’s a unifying task it is to enable and advance consciousness. R. P.

1 month ago | commonwealmagazine.org | Christian Wiman |Matt McManus |Todd Shy |Vincent Lloyd

She had a vision of the vowels of dovesfloating like snow in a common dawn,not so much freed from gravity, she said,as in league with it, a slow, deliberate danceof chance and law. She spoke of loneliness as a kind of sleep,nocturnal sorrows that mark the mindas lightly and palpably as prints in damp sand. We cannot eat an image, we cried. Say it: what must we do to be saved?

Dec 22, 2024 | newyorker.com | Christian Wiman

Melancholy, most beautiful word,like a sound some ancient instrument unearthed—or earthed, its fusion of cave and cloud.

Oct 23, 2024 | commonwealmagazine.org | Christian Wiman |Charles McNamara |Stephen Pope |Regina Munch

She wakes away a stage               —the receding cheers— herself some indeterminate age               and, it seemed, knownfor something she hasn’t done               in forty years. Distracted, she oversteeps the tea               (as she is prone),         sits in the sunlit living room,               mines a psalm;noticing the English ivy’s               dry and overgrown,salvages two lucky cuttings.