I hesitated before deciding whether to write about The Dance, the new collection of poetry by Christian Wiman. It wasn’t because I didn’t like; I did, enormously. It was more like the experience of entering the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, or the little chapel in the crypt of St. Bride’s Church in London. You feel the weight of the experience and the inevitable silence, even in a crowded room.
With The Dance, you’ve stepped into a quiet that demands you listen without speaking.
I’ve had this experience before with Wiman’s writing, both his poetry and his memoir, My Bright Abyss. That memoir was so intense that I needed three months to read it, sometimes only a paragraph or a page a day. I was reading it when I took an overseas trip, and I deliberately left it home because I knew it would overshadow everything I was about to see.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Tuesday Readings
Finding & Singing: Ten Things to Notice When You Read a Poem – Scott Crider at The Imaginative Conservative.
“Youth and Age on Beaulieu River,” poem by John Betjeman – Alexander Fayne.
Brink – poem by Andrew Roycroft.
Joseph’s Amazement: Reconciling Suspense in St. Robert Southwell’s Poetry – Emily Ransom at Church Life Journal.
“I Read My Sentence Steadily,” poem by Emily Dickinson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
A Reading in Emily’s House – poem by Andrea Potos at Every Day Poems.
On repentance – poem by Sarah Spradlin at Rabbit Room Poetry.
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