He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art

by Christian Wiman

Overview

A moving meditation on memory, oblivion, and eternity by one of our most celebrated poets

What is it we want when we can’t stop wanting? And how do we make that hunger productive and vital rather than corrosive and destructive? These are the questions that animate Christian Wiman as he explores the relationships between art and faith, death and fame, heaven and oblivion. Above all, He Held Radical Light is a love letter to poetry, filled with moving, surprising, and sometimes funny encounters with the poets Wiman has known. Seamus Heaney opens a suddenly intimate conversation about faith; Mary Oliver puts half of a dead pigeon in her pocket; A. R. Ammons stands up in front of an audience and refuses to read. He Held Radical Light is as urgent and intense as it is lively and entertaining—a sharp sequel to Wiman’s earlier memoir, My Bright Abyss.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250249456
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	357,795
Product dimensions:	5.45(w) x 8.29(h) x 0.35(d)

About the Author

Christian Wiman is the author of several books, including a memoir, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (FSG, 2013); Every Riven Thing (FSG, 2010), winner of the Ambassador Book Award in poetry; Once in the West (FSG, 2014), a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in poetry; and Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam. He teaches religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.

Editorial Reviews

Soul-searing . . . Early on in this book that reads like an unfiltered tete-a-tete, Wiman writes that when he left college, he set out to be a poet who would write ‘a poem that would live forever.’ He has done that with this magnificent, radiant memoir.” —Barbara Mahany, Chicago Tribune

“Taut, absorbing . . . Wiman, who was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer several years ago, wrestles with his own mortality and ambitions as he searches for truth through literature.” —Elizabeth Lund, The Washington Post

“He Held Radical Light is a book-length essay woven of spiritual memoir, literary criticism, and lyric poetry. It demonstrates with intelligence, honesty, and humor how vital poetry can be for any exploration of faith.” —Christianity Today

“Absorbing . . . doses of suspense keep this loosely associative text and its characters rolling briskly along: the narrative / memoir mode is interwoven with discussions of poems for which Wiman expresses a deep, unpedantic love.” —Beverley Bie Brahic, Times Literary Supplement

“[Wiman] is expert at identifying the exact image or lines where a poet has wrestled eternity onto the page . . . Strangely powerful . . . Even the most transcendent art arrives via the transient vessels known as artists, and Wiman knows how to bring both to life on the page.” —Casey N. Cep, The New York Times Book Review

“While continuing the discussion of existential and religious questions he addressed in earlier books, such as My Bright Abyss, in this latest work Wiman considers some of the central problems of a life dedicated to poetry—how the work must reach out toward something beyond it, and how one must nonetheless take the work seriously as an end in itself.” —Lidija Haas, Harper’s Magazine

“Beautiful and lasting . . . [He Held Radical Light] makes for a reading experience that is extremely rare.” —Arthur Willemse, The Millions

“He Held Radical Light is about the rewards and also the perils of a calling that can never quite deliver the poet, or the reader, to its inferred, its intended destination. It is a kind of road novel, without a destination on the map, yet with an existential purpose.” —Michael Schmidt, PN Review

“Wiman is a poet, a thinker, a searcher. He Held Radical Light is a wonderfully meandering, pensive, and sometimes complex book-length essay on what it means to seek God in poetry and life—and to often end up empty-handed, or even empty-hearted . . . A spirited jaunt through the world of contemporary poetry.” —Nick Ripatrazone, The Christian Century

“Quite simply, Christian Wiman’s He Held Radical Light is a beautiful book . . . Luminous and moving, He Held Radical Light brilliantly reveals the inextricable bonds of poetry and faith, and it serves as an evocative companion to Wiman’s 2013 memoir, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer.” —Henry L. Carrigan Jr., BookPage

“Wiman . . . weaves together philosophy and lush prose in an elliptical memoir about his long flirtation with the belief that he could gain immortality by writing a perfect poem. He explains this drive for the ideal through delicately theological questions, . . . close readings of poems[,] and a vast reservoir of personal anecdotes . . . Readers who allow themselves to be swept along by Wiman’s beautiful style and oblique considerations will come away with fresh strategies for unpacking faith in the contemporary world.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The link between art and faith, as seen by a noted poet . . . In this memoir, the author considers the question, ‘What is it we want when we can’t stop wanting?’ For Wiman, one answer is faith, but as he puts it, spiritual hunger is like poetry in that it ‘thrives on longings that can never be fulfilled’ . . . This moving book explores not only those torments, but also the understanding that art can provide.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

The poems Wiman has chosen are almost all gorgeous, and he explicates them gorgeously…He is expert at identifying the exact image or lines where a poet has wrestled eternity onto the page. It's hard to sustain a series of "moments" like that for very long, but Wiman's gratitude for them, and humility before them, makes this brief book strangely powerful…These are achievements of attention, and by gathering so many of them here Wiman trains us to look for them elsewhere. If it were only those close readings, He Held Radical Light would be a textbook; instead, the real joy is how beautifully it melds intellectual labor with humane fellowship, refusing to forget the flesh that made the words. Even the most transcendent art arrives via the transient vessels known as artists, and Wiman knows how to bring both to life on the page.

The New York Times Book Review - Casey N. Cep

★ 07/09/2018
Wiman (My Bright Abyss), a poet and professor of religion and literature at Yale, weaves together philosophy and lush prose in an elliptical memoir about his long flirtation with the belief that he could gain immortality by writing a perfect poem. He explains this drive for the ideal through delicately theological questions, including: is God the goal of all artistic hunger? And “what does one want when one cannot stop wanting?” By pulling together close readings of poems (including a striking dissection of Philip Larkin’s “Aubade”) and a vast reservoir of personal anecdotes, Wiman approaches (but never quite reaches) his answers. The stories largely come from his tenure as editor of Poetry magazine, where encountering poets in person deeply affected him. “It’s like being famous in your family,” Mark Strand told him about being considered a famous poet. He reconsiders Mary Oliver’s relationship to nature after she tells him that, out of respect, she carried a found dead bird in her pocket. Hearing Seamus Heaney read provided a singular experience of grace for Wiman: “I knew so much of his work not simply by heart, but by bone and nerve.” Readers who allow themselves to be swept along by Wiman’s beautiful style and oblique considerations will come away with fresh strategies for unpacking faith in the contemporary world. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

2018-05-28
The link between art and faith, as seen by a noted poet.When Wiman (Religion and Literature/Yale Univ.; Once in the West, 2014, etc.), a former editor of Poetry magazine, was 38, he had lunch with poet Donald Hall. During the meal, Hall "turned his Camel-blasted eighty-year-old Yeti decrepitude to me" and made a startling admission. "I was thirty-eight when I realized not a word I wrote was going to last," Hall said. That's a shocking thing for any young writer to hear, but Hall's statement would take on greater resonance when, a few years later, Wiman received a cancer diagnosis. In this memoir, the author considers the question, "What is it we want when we can't stop wanting?" For Wiman, one answer is faith, but as he puts it, spiritual hunger is like poetry in that it "thrives on longings that can never be fulfilled, and dies when the poet thinks they have been." Throughout this volume, the author explores the relationship between poetry and faith and the lessons each has taught him. He references many poems, most notably Philip Larkin's "Aubade," in which Larkin laments "Unresting death, a whole day nearer now" and "The good not done, the love not given, time / Torn off unused." Wiman also writes of the poets he has known, among them A.R. Ammons, who, during a reading when Wiman was an undergraduate, said to the crowd, "You can't possibly be enjoying this," and sat down; and Mary Oliver, who, after Wiman picked her up for Chicago's annual Poetry Day, examined with wonder a dead half-pigeon they found on the ground, stuffed it into her jacket, and gave her reading with the half-pigeon still in her pocket."It is hard learning to live ‘one hour higher than the torments,' " Wiman writes, quoting Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer. This moving book explores not only those torments, but also the understanding that art can provide.

Kirkus Reviews