Christian Wiman is well known in the poetry world for a variety of things, most of which wreak of integrity. He is the editor of Poetry Magazine, one of the nation’s foremost literary publication. As editor it has been noted that his poems have never appeared in Poetry Magazine even though he has developed quite an international following. The fact that he refrains from using his position to promote himself would rank high among his many virtues. In recent years, Mr. Wiman underwent an excruciatingly painful bone morrow transplant procedure to treat a rare form of cancer. It is one thing to take an ordinary consciousness to the brink of extinction, but something much more thoughtful and inspiring comes out of the mind a person like Christian Wiman when he steps to the edge of his own life and existence.
His poetry is the stuff of the greatest thinking that poetry has ever offered. Poetry has always had the advantage over prose in that it can transcend mere verbal communication to embody an expression of human intuitive thinking. This has always allowed poetry as a vehicle to tap and convey a far greater bandwidth of awareness than other genres of writing. In Wiman’s hands, this is a necessity for what he has to say is so much bigger than mere narration could possibly encapsulate. His thoughts on being, faith, divinity and theology are rich and well studied. He cannot but open his mouth without the scholar becoming omnipresent in his speaking. But because he is a poet, because he thinks and speaks in expressions that take such great advantage of his insightful cognitive tools, his ideas can be heard with at least some semblance of their depth.
Raised in Texas in a Baptist family, Winman was part of a religious conversation that he seems to have outgrown at a fairly early age. He claims to have spent his early adulthood looking at the world from a compassionate, yet agnostic point of view. In recent years, this point of view has changed as cancer forced a close inspection self, being and divinity into his life with stark abruptness. Being a man of stunning intellectual capacity, he did what all great thinkers do – he engaged the best ideas available to him as he considered in the midst of a potentially fatal illness how life, being, self and soul all interrelate through the lens of his knowledge, but more importantly, his experience.
What emerges is one of the most thoughtful and compassionate perspectives of divinity in the context of Christian theology that has been spoken in recent decades amidst the the often violent dogmatic confrontations that mark our times. There is an subtle optimism in his writing that refuses to fully yield to the constraints of mortality. Wiman sees a new theology emerging that takes what humanity has learned from science and the multitude of religions and makes sense of them in a way that resonates for thinking people of all faiths. His personal faith is ever present, but it is the absence of dogma that is so breathtaking. He is a Christian of no religion, which makes his ideas on faith and divinity all the more accessible and useful to anyone regardless of religious background. While his ideas are fresh they are built on a foundation of poets and theologians who have come before him. One cannot help but notice a similarity to some of the great spiritual thinkers of the past century including Thomas Merton, to name just one.
Like many human beings before him, Christian Wiman has had the abstraction of death stripped away from him and has had to stare it in the face. When a truly great mind comes to such a moment, the sparks of consciousness fly and illuminate the great existential conundrum with a fury that benefits all with its illumination. But in the process, this man, this wide-awake man, speaks from the edge of personal oblivion verses that lead to the very evolution of human consciousness. While it may not have been his intention to be an evangelist of a new covenant with a greater glory of being, he just may be making one anyway.
To learn more about Christian Wiman check out the following resources:
Krista Tippett‘s excellent interview with Christian Wiman aired on April 15, 2012 as part of her On Being Public Radio broadcast.
Bill Moyer’s interview with Christian Wiman in February, 2012.
Christian Wiman’s poem Every Riven Thing.
Christian Wiman’s poem Hammer Is The Prayer.
And this, the author’s personal favorite: And I Said To My Soul, Be Loud.
[Author’s Note: It is my deepest personal prayer that this great mind, this being of wonder, be well and healthy for we all need so very badly to hear what he will say next.]
