Raised as a Southern Baptist, Christian Wiman lost his religion early on, then wrote several fine books of poetry, became editor of Poetry magazine and learned he had a rare, incurable form of cancer. As he described in his popular memoir, My Bright Abyss, he returned to faith, to prayer. He felt his strong spiritual hunger fulfilled--and his cancer hasn't killed him yet.
In his fourth poetry collection, Once in the West, Wiman explores the "hard horizonless country" of his West Texas roots, his religion, his family and the joy of being alive. Here, he proves himself to be a writer who can show us the world poetically from a metaphysical, mystical, religious viewpoint. His poetry can sustain, lift up, support--it is sustenance for the soul. His is an intense, intimate poetry, employing surprising meter, rhyme and word juxtaposition to share ideas, opinions and memories.
In "Winterlude," he confesses to the reader his experience with cancer, the pain and the suffering. "Painlady leaning into pain as every day she does:/ this time it's mine, this time my spine's/ rivering new forms of formlessness:/ lava crawling creaturely through my jaw,/ one shoulder shot through with shineless light/ only the unliving could see by."
In an epigraph to "Self-Portrait, with Preacher, Pain, and Snow," Wiman quotes theologian Karl Barth. It does much to encapsulate Wiman's life and art: "We need to be ready and resolved simply to let the truth be told us and therefore to be apprehended by it." --Tom Lavoie, former publisher