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gracekatreads's review against another edition
2.75
Interesting, but in trying to be a memoir, a work of theology, and an exploration of poetry, it fails overall.
nrt43's review against another edition
4.0
Sometime last September I purchased He Held Radical Light and hurried through about half of it before putting it down. It seems I didn't have the patience needed to savor his writing style. (You cannot read Wiman quickly.) Yet, on a whim last weekend I picked it up again starting where I left off and then after finishing, read it again from the beginning.
Wiman's first book, My Bright Abyss, shook something loose in me, and gave a freedom, or better yet, words for something I didn't how to articulate, something perhaps I didn't realize I needed to verbalize, until he did. This one did not reverberate with quite the same resonance, but it was beautiful nonetheless. It will be one I will return to and one I've recommended already to a friend.
Wiman is a poet. I know few of them, but they tend to be in want. There is a "kindred disposition toward darkness" that I feel, but not as intensely. This book is a reflection on the relationship between art to faith, and faith to art, and in particular 'what it is we want when we can't stop wanting.'
Here are some favorite quotes:
"But what song - or what but song - can contain that tangle of pain and praise?"
"Poetry itself - like life, like love, like any spiritual hunger - thrives on longings that can never be fulfilled, and dies when the poet things they have been."
"Nothing poisons truth so quickly as an assurance that one has found it."
"You can't let the flashes of insight harden into 'knowledge.' You have to remain true to those moments of truth."
"It's not simply that the hunger that gives rise to art must be greater than what art can satisfy. The hunger must be other than what art can satisfy. The poem is means, not end."
"The art" [of many poets he references] "contains and expresses a faith that the artist, in the rest of his waking life, rejects." (This is a bigger idea Wiman explores, looking at many poets, and how the poet and person often reveal different leanings.)
"One of art's functions is to give form to feelings that would otherwise remain inchoate and corrosive, to give us a means whereby we can inhabit our fears and pains rather than they us, to help us live with our losses rather than being permanently and helplessly haunted by them."
"This is what critics of faith... have said for years - that religion is simply a refusal to face our deaths."
"I don't really believe in atheists. Nor in true believers, for that matter. One either lives toward God or not.... There is no middle ground, no cautious agnosticism in which to settle, no spiritual indifference that is not, even when accompanied by high refinement and exquisite intelligence, torpor."
There is "something about the eerie ways in which the work of a half-believer, an agnostic - hell, even an atheist who is genuinely intent on disclosing reality - can be the tool that clears the ground for the ground of being."
"Just as there are truths we can see only at a slant, there are truths the very authenticity of which depends upon their not being uttered. The 'meaning' of suffering is often like this."
"The casual way that American Christians have of talking about God is not simply dispiriting. but is, for some sensibilities, actively destructive. There are times when silence is not only the highest, but the only possible, piety."
"It is a strange state of affairs... to be able to speak a thing you can't conceive, to be in possession of knowledge that you cannot, in any meaningful sense, know." (Here he's referencing the expanding cosmos, and later on quarks. Yet this 'state' can refer to more.)
"I have long thought - because I have long felt - that the perfections of art implied or even anticipated some ultimate order one need not call God, but could call out to nonetheless."
Here are some of my favorite pairings and phrases:
- abstract oblivion
- "as if my soul had chewed on tinfoil"
- promiscuous sympathy
- "a clean whiff of metaphysics"
- indeterminate devotion
- tenacious discipline
- "as if nature were an epiphany machine"
- a chance at light
- "kindred disposition toward darkness"
- "to be the wizard on one's own Oz"
- "surprised a happiness in my I hadn't know was there"
- to define is to defile
- "as if some existential key had been slipped into the lock of my soul"
There's no doubt that by chopping up his prose into bite size sentences and phrases, I have, at least on some level, defiled it. His 'chapters' are barely chapters, and everything bleeds into the next.
A few writers I hope to read in the future: John Polkinghorne, Karl Barth, Jane Kenyon, Craig Arnold
A quote from Frank Bidart's poetry:
Understand that there is a beast within you
that can drink till it is
sick, but cannot drink till it is satisfied.
If you share a "kindred disposition for darkness," and have spiritual longings you can't quite articulate, this may be just the book for you.
Wiman's first book, My Bright Abyss, shook something loose in me, and gave a freedom, or better yet, words for something I didn't how to articulate, something perhaps I didn't realize I needed to verbalize, until he did. This one did not reverberate with quite the same resonance, but it was beautiful nonetheless. It will be one I will return to and one I've recommended already to a friend.
Wiman is a poet. I know few of them, but they tend to be in want. There is a "kindred disposition toward darkness" that I feel, but not as intensely. This book is a reflection on the relationship between art to faith, and faith to art, and in particular 'what it is we want when we can't stop wanting.'
Here are some favorite quotes:
"But what song - or what but song - can contain that tangle of pain and praise?"
"Poetry itself - like life, like love, like any spiritual hunger - thrives on longings that can never be fulfilled, and dies when the poet things they have been."
"Nothing poisons truth so quickly as an assurance that one has found it."
"You can't let the flashes of insight harden into 'knowledge.' You have to remain true to those moments of truth."
"It's not simply that the hunger that gives rise to art must be greater than what art can satisfy. The hunger must be other than what art can satisfy. The poem is means, not end."
"The art" [of many poets he references] "contains and expresses a faith that the artist, in the rest of his waking life, rejects." (This is a bigger idea Wiman explores, looking at many poets, and how the poet and person often reveal different leanings.)
"One of art's functions is to give form to feelings that would otherwise remain inchoate and corrosive, to give us a means whereby we can inhabit our fears and pains rather than they us, to help us live with our losses rather than being permanently and helplessly haunted by them."
"This is what critics of faith... have said for years - that religion is simply a refusal to face our deaths."
"I don't really believe in atheists. Nor in true believers, for that matter. One either lives toward God or not.... There is no middle ground, no cautious agnosticism in which to settle, no spiritual indifference that is not, even when accompanied by high refinement and exquisite intelligence, torpor."
There is "something about the eerie ways in which the work of a half-believer, an agnostic - hell, even an atheist who is genuinely intent on disclosing reality - can be the tool that clears the ground for the ground of being."
"Just as there are truths we can see only at a slant, there are truths the very authenticity of which depends upon their not being uttered. The 'meaning' of suffering is often like this."
"The casual way that American Christians have of talking about God is not simply dispiriting. but is, for some sensibilities, actively destructive. There are times when silence is not only the highest, but the only possible, piety."
"It is a strange state of affairs... to be able to speak a thing you can't conceive, to be in possession of knowledge that you cannot, in any meaningful sense, know." (Here he's referencing the expanding cosmos, and later on quarks. Yet this 'state' can refer to more.)
"I have long thought - because I have long felt - that the perfections of art implied or even anticipated some ultimate order one need not call God, but could call out to nonetheless."
Here are some of my favorite pairings and phrases:
- abstract oblivion
- "as if my soul had chewed on tinfoil"
- promiscuous sympathy
- "a clean whiff of metaphysics"
- indeterminate devotion
- tenacious discipline
- "as if nature were an epiphany machine"
- a chance at light
- "kindred disposition toward darkness"
- "to be the wizard on one's own Oz"
- "surprised a happiness in my I hadn't know was there"
- to define is to defile
- "as if some existential key had been slipped into the lock of my soul"
There's no doubt that by chopping up his prose into bite size sentences and phrases, I have, at least on some level, defiled it. His 'chapters' are barely chapters, and everything bleeds into the next.
A few writers I hope to read in the future: John Polkinghorne, Karl Barth, Jane Kenyon, Craig Arnold
A quote from Frank Bidart's poetry:
Understand that there is a beast within you
that can drink till it is
sick, but cannot drink till it is satisfied.
If you share a "kindred disposition for darkness," and have spiritual longings you can't quite articulate, this may be just the book for you.
kte1226's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
ben_smitty's review against another edition
4.0
Enjoyable though quite dense and will likely require a re-read.
lukenotjohn's review against another edition
4.0
Wiman's previous book, [b:My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer|15793626|My Bright Abyss Meditation of a Modern Believer|Christian Wiman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344319638l/15793626._SY75_.jpg|21515600], features some of my all-time favorite writing on faith, so the expectations were high going into this...and not necessarily met. I felt underwhelmed comparing the two, but after pausing to try considering this on its own accord, I have to credit it for still being a beautiful little book of sharp and stirring insight. Whereas the former was primarily a meditation on faith by a poet, this is mostly a reflection on poetry by a person of faith. And, of course, Wiman's faith is particular, complicated, and searing; he is a modern mystic for whom poetry seems to often by the only language capable of transcending the apophatic, and so fittingly he is also inclined towards poets that are not overt in their belief –and even overt in their disbelief– of a transcendent.
My biggest complaint against the book (which could be more so a reflection of my own failings as a reader) is that at the end and all the way through, I struggled to articulate the specific point(s) Wiman was making. Obviously this is a "love letter to poetry" as the blurb describes before it's anything else, but it's also certainly something else. Probably a meditation on the way that reality is elusive, with a fleeting perceptability, and that poetry and faith are simultaneously means of glimpsing it and refractions of that notion in and of themselves. (Maybe feeling like I can't fully grasp the point was the point, then?) And yet, my pages are marked up with underlinings and margin notes –– I was often moved by the reflections here and certainly the language, even if they're proving a bit evanescent for me. I think that experience would be a lot more frustrating with a longer book; the conciseness here serves Wiman well.
It was also a clever move to orient nearly all of his reflections around the work of poets he had personal encounters with. This helped give focus to the sort of meandering ideas, and grounded the philosophical musings with stories of surprisingly stark clarity in contrast. The anecdote about [a:Mary Oliver|23988|Mary Oliver|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1634180145p2/23988.jpg] alone just about made the entire book feel worth it, and I was surprised to find myself near tears at the end of the chapter describing [a:Craig Arnold|288021|Craig Arnold|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1239380935p2/288021.jpg], a poet I'd never heard of but who Wiman described so vividly and lovingly that his tragic end really choked me up. Ultimately, I'm definitely glad to have read this (honestly I'm excited to add it to my bookshelf for the cover alone), but I'm hopeful that Wiman will write more material with a clearer focus on faith again –– his perspective and articulation is both unique and intimately resonant for me.
My biggest complaint against the book (which could be more so a reflection of my own failings as a reader) is that at the end and all the way through, I struggled to articulate the specific point(s) Wiman was making. Obviously this is a "love letter to poetry" as the blurb describes before it's anything else, but it's also certainly something else. Probably a meditation on the way that reality is elusive, with a fleeting perceptability, and that poetry and faith are simultaneously means of glimpsing it and refractions of that notion in and of themselves. (Maybe feeling like I can't fully grasp the point was the point, then?) And yet, my pages are marked up with underlinings and margin notes –– I was often moved by the reflections here and certainly the language, even if they're proving a bit evanescent for me. I think that experience would be a lot more frustrating with a longer book; the conciseness here serves Wiman well.
It was also a clever move to orient nearly all of his reflections around the work of poets he had personal encounters with. This helped give focus to the sort of meandering ideas, and grounded the philosophical musings with stories of surprisingly stark clarity in contrast. The anecdote about [a:Mary Oliver|23988|Mary Oliver|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1634180145p2/23988.jpg] alone just about made the entire book feel worth it, and I was surprised to find myself near tears at the end of the chapter describing [a:Craig Arnold|288021|Craig Arnold|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1239380935p2/288021.jpg], a poet I'd never heard of but who Wiman described so vividly and lovingly that his tragic end really choked me up. Ultimately, I'm definitely glad to have read this (honestly I'm excited to add it to my bookshelf for the cover alone), but I'm hopeful that Wiman will write more material with a clearer focus on faith again –– his perspective and articulation is both unique and intimately resonant for me.
eely225's review against another edition
4.0
The goal here, it must be noted, is narrower than in My Bright Abyss. Wiman focuses on poets he has known, most of whom have died, and how their experience in poetry challenged them to engage with the balance of poetry as an act toward faith in something outside one's self, or poetry as a faith in itself. Additionally, Wiman details some of the experiences that led him into the editorship of Poetry, as well as what led him out of it.
Poetry is at its best when it shows rather then tells, so the reader cannot expect clearly delineated conclusions. Wiman shows something of the nature of the professional pursuit of poetry, how it relates to everyone, and then the book is over. It's a question he makes no attempt to answer. If you're up for ambiguity and appreciate his voice, you'll likely not be disappointed. But it's bound to provoke variable reactions.
Poetry is at its best when it shows rather then tells, so the reader cannot expect clearly delineated conclusions. Wiman shows something of the nature of the professional pursuit of poetry, how it relates to everyone, and then the book is over. It's a question he makes no attempt to answer. If you're up for ambiguity and appreciate his voice, you'll likely not be disappointed. But it's bound to provoke variable reactions.
leerazer's review against another edition
4.0
Reading Wiman, former editor of Poetry magazine, on poetry and faith is always a pleasure. Here he argues that poetry, or art generally, cannot be an end. The hunger that gives rise to art cannot be satisfied by it. But experiencing or creating great poetry, or art, I think he is saying, functions to quiet the incessant chatter and cacophony in one’s head (what I think Buddhism calls the “monkey mind”) forming a “spot in time” to quote Wordsworth, in which faith is present, before, inevitably, it slips away again in the currents. In this it is similar to being confronted with the hard fact of one’s imminent death, which also serves to still the mind. Wiman, a poet and rare cancer survivor, at least argues from firsthand knowledge.
Interestingly Wiman believes that even great poets who reject theistic faith - Ammons, Oliver, Larkin - express these spots of time in their works. They express the divine order in their poetry while rejecting it everywhere else, and indeed, this is a feature of modern artists. Even Larkin’s famous and possibly terrifying poem Aubade, reading in part, “The sure extinction that we travel to / And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, / Not to be anywhere, / And soon: nothing more terrible, nothing more true.” does this. The dark night of the soul, the scouring of the ego, is no stranger, no unknown companion, to faith. Larkin himself could not accept the signs of faith in his own work, but they are present.
What eternal outcome faith points to Wiman cannot say. He discounts the traditional Christian conception of the continuation of self in another form as a mere dream and fantasy, granting Larkin and other critics of religion a point when they say it is all about fear and trying to avoid death, though Wiman still identifies as Christian. Many believers would say his own faith is therefore weak, though it reminds me of Nabokov, writing in his fiction of how unoriginal and uncreative the human imagination is, that all we can envision eternity being is basically more of what we already know. We can’t know.
Wiman quotes Rabbi Heschel’s definition of faith as faithfulness to a time when we had faith. It’s a slippery thing, coming and going, impossible to pin down, but at times glancingly accessible. Great art being one of those times, capable of emerging even through persons who posses no faith at all, who may not recognize it in their own work. Poets treat their art as an ends rather than a means of expressing the greater order at their own peril, however, for “Understand that there is a beast within you / that can drink till it is / sick, but cannot drink till it is satisfied... / It does / not wish you well.” (Frank Bidart)
Interestingly Wiman believes that even great poets who reject theistic faith - Ammons, Oliver, Larkin - express these spots of time in their works. They express the divine order in their poetry while rejecting it everywhere else, and indeed, this is a feature of modern artists. Even Larkin’s famous and possibly terrifying poem Aubade, reading in part, “The sure extinction that we travel to / And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, / Not to be anywhere, / And soon: nothing more terrible, nothing more true.” does this. The dark night of the soul, the scouring of the ego, is no stranger, no unknown companion, to faith. Larkin himself could not accept the signs of faith in his own work, but they are present.
What eternal outcome faith points to Wiman cannot say. He discounts the traditional Christian conception of the continuation of self in another form as a mere dream and fantasy, granting Larkin and other critics of religion a point when they say it is all about fear and trying to avoid death, though Wiman still identifies as Christian. Many believers would say his own faith is therefore weak, though it reminds me of Nabokov, writing in his fiction of how unoriginal and uncreative the human imagination is, that all we can envision eternity being is basically more of what we already know. We can’t know.
Wiman quotes Rabbi Heschel’s definition of faith as faithfulness to a time when we had faith. It’s a slippery thing, coming and going, impossible to pin down, but at times glancingly accessible. Great art being one of those times, capable of emerging even through persons who posses no faith at all, who may not recognize it in their own work. Poets treat their art as an ends rather than a means of expressing the greater order at their own peril, however, for “Understand that there is a beast within you / that can drink till it is / sick, but cannot drink till it is satisfied... / It does / not wish you well.” (Frank Bidart)