Saturday, November 22, 2014

Christian Wiman’s “Once in the West”


I’ve read a lot of poetry over my lifetime, and likely more in the last 10 years than the rest combined. Rarely have I been as taken with a collection as I have with Christian Wiman’s Once in the West: Poems.

The poems originate in Wiman’s childhood and coming of age in Texas. They extend beyond that, into the reader’s mind and own experience, a collection of sharp, piercing stones with cutting edges that leave blood on the floor – the blood of life and of a life lived.

Some may mind the occasional profanity. I didn’t, and it surprised me that I didn’t.

I’ll have more to say later, but here is one example of a poem from the collection.
 
Calculus

A soul
extrapolated

from the body’s
need

needs a body
of loss

is that, then,
what we were

given
in that back-

seat, sweat-
soaked, skin-

habited heaven
of days

when rapture
was pure

beginning
and sinning

praise?

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Photograph by Silviu Firulete via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

4 comments:

  1. Wiman is an incredible poet. I read and re-read his work.

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  2. this gorgeous sample settles it - i'm ordering some today. thank you, glynn.

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  3. Couple his book My Bright Abyss with Once In The West and he is becomes a comrade to this poet wannabe. I like the blood image. If poetry doesn's lacerate in some way it can't reach the soul.

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  4. Isn't it fascinating that both Wiman and Gregory Orr had similar catastrophic trauma in childhood? Their words have a mystic authority...

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