Two Poems:
"Darkness Starts"
"Reading Herodotus"
from Christian Wiman's
Hard Night
"Darkness Starts"
"Reading Herodotus"
from Christian Wiman's
Hard Night
Christian Wiman:
Christian Wiman is the author of one previous book of poetry, The Long Home (1998), which won the Nicholas Roerich Prize, and a book of criticism, Ambition and Survival: Essays on Poetry (2004). His poems, criticisms, and personal essays appear widely, in such magazines as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The New York Times Book Review, and Slate. He is the editor of Poetry magazine. (Photo by Robert Murphy)
About Hard Night:
Hard Night is a book of appealing intensity and range. From personal lyrics of loss and solitude to ambitiously evocative narratives, Christian Wiman's new poems reveal a talent and scope that are rare in contemporary poetry. Three long poems define the structure of Hard Night, each variously meditating on art, loneliness, and love. The book culminates with "Being Serious," a birth-to-death biography of Serious, a tragi-comic man who is as entertaining as he is poignant. Interspersed are twenty shorter lyrics that in their formal and musical dexterity, emotional directness, and avoidance of sentimentality recall the work of Frost and Yeats.
Wiman, the Editor of Poetry, demonstrates in his second book that his own poetry is "equipment for living", exhibiting both mysterious surface clarity and great depth while evincing a feeling for real life.
"A poet we will reckon with over time."
— Kirkus Reviews
"A legitimate heir to Frost."
— Ploughshares
"At a time when many poets are using fragmentation and collage as their modus operandi, Wiman is a patient master of tradition: polishing each word, moving each poem coherently from beginning to end by an unfractured, emotional logic."
— San Jose Mercury News
by Christian Wiman
Copper Canyon Press
Port Townsend, Washington
Poetry Daily / Amazon.com
Selected books available by Christian Wiman:Hard Night — Paperback
Ambition And Survival: on Poetry — Paperback
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