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    Once in the West: Poems
    Once in the West: Poems
    Once in the West: Poems
    Ebook94 pages34 minutes

    Once in the West: Poems

    By Christian Wiman

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    About this ebook

    One of The New York Times' 10 Favorite Poetry Books of 2014

    National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

    A searing new collection from one of our country's most important poets

    Memories mercies
    mostly aren't

    but there were
    I swear
    days
    veined with grace

    —from "Memory's Mercies"

    Once in the West, Christian Wiman's fourth collection, is as intense and intimate as poetry gets—from the "suffering of primal silence" that it plumbs to the "rockshriek of joy" that it achieves and enables. Readers of Wiman's earlier books will recognize the sharp characterizations and humor—"From her I learned the earthworm's exemplary open-mindedness, / its engine of discriminate shit"—as well as his particular brand of reverent rage: "Lord if I implore you please just please leave me alone / is that a prayer that's every instant answered?" But there is something new here, too: moving love poems to his wife, tender glimpses of his children, and, amid the onslaughts of illness and fear and failures, "a trace / of peace."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 9, 2014
    ISBN9780374713546
    Once in the West: Poems
    Author

    Christian Wiman

    Christian Wiman is the author, editor, or translator of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, including two memoirs, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art; Every Riven Thing, winner of the Ambassador Book Award; Once in the West, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and Survival Is a Style—all published by FSG. He teaches religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and at Yale Divinity School.

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