Once in the West: Poems

by Christian Wiman

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

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

Winner of the 2 015 Philosophical Society of Texas Award of Merit in Poetry


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 "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, 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."

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 9, 2014

About the author

Christian Wiman is an American poet and editor born in 1966 and raised in West Texas. He graduated from Washington and Lee University and has taught at Northwestern University, Stanford University, Lynchburg College in Virginia, and the Prague School of Economics. In 2003 he became editor of the oldest American magazine of verse, Poetry.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's Wednesday, and I don't tend to do Goodreads poetry reviews on Wednesday. (At least not well.) My gut reaction is that I'm rounding up to 4 stars. I think I liked his previous collection better, but this one seems more personal, more intimate, more haunted since you are intensely aware, throughout, of Wiman's incurable cancer. My main complaint was there were too many long, skinny poems that often seemed to lack the charged language necessary for long, skinny poems. That said, there were almost always good lines within those poems. In other words there were parts of poems I liked better than their overall whole, which I sometimes didn't quite understand. But that could be lazy reading on my part. There are also a number of poems in this collection that just blew me away. I need to go back and re-read a few, so consider this a placeholder review until this weekend.

[J.A.A. Purves · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if it is the way that Wiman ordered them, or if his poems just gradually awakened my sensibilities for the different layers of meaning that he has placed in them, but these poems seemed to grow more and more powerful the further along in the book that I read them.

"Prayer," "Calculus," "Keynote" and "Music Maybe" are all early favorites. Then "Black Diamond" and "We Lived" hit home deeper than I expected them too. But things only get better from there. The language of "Believing Green" is beautiful. I will be re-reading "Into the Instant's Bliss," "The Preacher Addresses the Seminarians" and "Self-Portrait, with Preacher, Pain, and Snow" over and over again over the next month. "The Secret" is one of the most mysterious poems in the book that seems to blur the distinction between meaning and things meaned.

I will be savoring and meditating upon lines like "... felt, she said, each seed surreptitiously split / the adamantine dark, believing green ..." and "When heaven fears its secrets will be told / it tells them to the least and the lost of us ..." and "God's absolute otherness / and electrons that seem to read / researchers' minds, the crux / at which to assert and to assent / become the same abrading verb ..." for a long while after.

And then, the third section, "More Like the Stars" is beyond my ability to describe. I will be re-reading it again shortly.

Thank you, Mr. Wiman. You have given us another book that we can cherish and that will be worth reading and pondering over for years to come.

[Rachel Edney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m speechless

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an "ecstatic ruckus." My favorite book of Wiman's so far.


The end of the final poem--


. . .once in the Shedd aquarium in Chicago
I floated a moment

with my love and the two new lives
borne from us
who loved best
the eensy
green
almost
unfish. . .

For me for a long time
not the minnows mattered

but the pattern after: miraculous
I didn't think

to think:
all those mite-eyes and animate instants

answering at once to my need
and to nothing

as if my very nerves worked
in finally a saving sense

Something in us touches
suffering
touching
us

like the constellations
of kinetic quiet

that bound us beyond us
as right to the wall the girls pressed

their still-forming faces
through which the wild new schools flew
almost
too green
too blue
to stand

And I held your hand.

[Jody]

How to rate this slim volume of mostly two-line stanzas strung together? Maybe with two stars...certainly not three, because that would be to say I liked these poems. I didn't. But once I began, I couldn't quit drinking the words down to see how they would taste. They tasted like a bitter Hopkins, if he had lived in modern America. They tasted like loss, hard edges, deep blackness, and wells of tears. Not things I normally mind the taste of, but these were laced with acridness unslaked. There was little to no beauty limned in for relief. And in truth, some lives (too many lives) are like that—arid, acid, acrid, aching...with no relief. So, maybe five stars?



*Note: There is some strong language scattered throughout Wiman's collection.

[William Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

BETWEEN

Sometimes amid the starkrock
quality of sickness—

steel trays, sterile hands,
white walls like unlichened stone—

she felt, between herself
and her surround,

whatever rivers
through the nerves of birds

the moment before migration.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the beginning of the book (maybe the first dozen poems or so) had me worried that "Every Riven Thing" was an unusual poetic achievement for Wiman, the work very quickly returned to his powerful and intriguing command of language and form. There are several standouts, but it felt as though each poem built on the energy of those before it, culminating in the third section of the book, More Like The Stars, with poems that are the most challenging and most distinct in the volume. Wiman's experience of illness is present throughout the book, which I think gives many of the poems their urgency, but I think it can also be seen the more reflective poems where the speaker rummages through memories and places of times past. Overall, I think this is an excellent read, and I look forward to spending more time with these poems.

[David Haller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Structurally interesting? Is that a compliment?

Many years ago, I had this idea that it could be interesting to compose a piece of writing based on the flow of sound rather than flow of meaning - and that's kind of what Wiman does here with his bridging of word boundaries. Now I know that, while a cool idea, it's not particularly fun to read.

More concisely, Wiman's poetry "babbles".

I'm not going to say his work isn't shelf-worthy - indeed, it's best enjoyed picking it up and reading a selection from time to time, or mining for evocative phrases - but it can wait in line after more essential works.

[Zack Clemmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, I'm very grateful for the academic calendar, which remains the sanest, most humane work-leisure balance of any profession I know of, and which provided ample time for an end-of-year book cramming.

Second, this collection slays, in 2017 parlance. It's like taking that sublime sequence of West Texas faces and Bardem's priest's ministry from Malick's To The Wonder and diving into it for a book-length treatment. Language cut to the quick, images that linger (the sparks of the El, the repeated vein motif). Pain, labor, struggle, hardwon briefs of peace. And you can't read that last poem aloud without weeping. I'm grateful for Wiman.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Christ's ever unhearable/and thus always too bearable/scream."

Five stars because: Wiman. So good. So fresh and unmistakable. His delight in neologisms and reckoning with death and faith will always leave me in raptures. I think I liked this less than "Every Riven Thing," perhaps because I do not have any knowledge of or affection for Texas (or the idea of Texas), but it's excellent all the same. Recommended.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Six stars. Seven. A poet is brought to the brink of death by a ferocious cancer. He lives through it and chronicles, in verse and stanzas, not just the pain, but a love that he found worth living far. This book of poems is life.

[Christina “6 word reviewer” Lake]

Reaches into void left by Dickinson!

[Oliver Egger · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you know me, you know I love poetry. But recently it’s been taking me a while to read a full poetry book, I can only digest a few pieces at a time.

This is especially true with this stark and moving collection. The poems are complicated and uneasy (in a good way). I found myself struck by the deep pain at the heart of beauty, the dread in the center of all love, the suffering in the midst of faith. Wiman is a great poet and his poems have sophistication that make them both timeless and at times difficult to read. Wouldn’t recommend again to all but to those wanting some high quality poetry to ponder over this is the book for you.

[conor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read much contemporary poetry, but if this is any indication of the beauty that is out there I definitely should start. Wiman's poems are evocative and emotional and spiritual and sometimes I can't quite place my finger on why, but I feel something powerful. There's at moments a welding of the crass and vulgar with the sacred that might strike some as insensitive (or blasphemous), but that signaled a grounded, complex spirituality to me. There's a lot here to dig into more fully and I'm excited to do that.

[Jonathan Subers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I write often, I have very rarely read poetry. If I'm honest, I find reading poetry to be mostly tedious and uninteresting – but I've come to realize that my personal writings have reached their ceiling and that in order for me to continue to create works which excite me, I would need to develop an appetite for others' writings. Thus I have now found myself with stacks of collections on my bedside table to consume with the hopes of discovering a poet who can help to stretch and inspire me. This is the first book on that journey, and I loved it. And I will read it again many times. Thank you, Christian, for Once in the West.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I might have a new favorite living poet.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

<3

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Wiman's poetry so much.

[Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wiman's new collection is absolutely fantastic. Between this set of poems, Every Riven Thing, and My Bright Abyss, his essay about modern spirituality, Wiman has quickly become one of my favorite writers and thinkers.

I've read somewhere that the greatest compliment an artist can give another is to say "I wish I'd written that." Such a wish is certainly true of so many of Wiman's poems in this book. The hallmarks of Wiman's style in these poems is his play with word sound in the form of rhyme and invention and his shaking up of traditional syntax.

There are literally too many wonderful examples to pick some to quote here, so I will simply suggest reading this book as soon as possible, specifically, the poems "The Preacher Addresses The Seminarians " (which the New York Times called a "near masterpiece"), "Black Diamond," "Between," and the longish untitled section at the book's conclusion which begins "I don't want to be alive anymore." The latter is the single best piece of writing I've ever found which accurately captures the chaos, pain, sublimity, isolation, and dehumanization of illness.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I can review this after just one reading. It's still ringing in my ears... But I'll say this: Where it is brilliant, it is jaw-droppingly so. It begs to be read aloud and I'd like to make a list of all the awesome blended words he creates in this collection. Just fantastic stuff. But then there were poems that... were too mysterious and modern and did the kinds of things that people hate poetry for doing. I felt a little left in the dust on some poems. But that is likely my own fault. But that is what poetry tries to get you to think... that it's brilliant and you're just stupid for not getting it. So I'm resisting that conclusion. Even though it might be accurate.

[Beatrice Drury · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not long ago I reviewed a book of poetry and told how I liked the subject matter but bemoaned the fact that the poetry had no rhythm and was difficult to read.

This book of poetry reversed that opinion. This book was a joy to read because there was beautiful rhythm and the words rolled off the tongue with pleasure. However..... I found the ideas the author wanted to convey by and large incomprehensible. Yes I did understand and enjoy a few poems but the majority did not mean anything to me.

[Jonathan Hiskes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Wiman's recent essays, these poems are dense, rich, and deserving of more attention than I can muster most nights. They stare at mortality and despair like spidering cracks in the windshield.

One of my favorites, "Even the Demon," begins, "It takes a real cow / to bite beyond / the prickly pear's / sharp spokes." I like that. Strange fruit encased in sharp spokes. It takes a real cow.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wiman is n essayist and poet of the highest order. I can remember clearly his talk at Christ Episcopal in Charlottesville last year and can see so much of his new language of faith in this collection. A wonderful way to spend an hour, and then start again.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and sad. One of my favorite writers.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little bit disappointed, after having read Every Riven Thing, which I really enjoyed, this one is just not quite as striking.

[Grace Heymsfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

And still: some who cry the name of Christ /
Live more remote from love /
Than those who cry to a void they cannot name

Christian Wiman ❤️ national poetry month!

[Clement · Rating 4 out of 5]

This year, 2018, I've intentionally tried to read more poetry and, of the poetry collections I've read this year, Christian Wiman's Once in the West has been one of my favorite. Wiman's poetry that dealt specifically with spirituality were, in my opinion, the best in the collection, he has a rawness in his voice that is refreshing because it's not an angry bitter ranting sort of rawness but, rather one that is honest but, maintains grace. Into the Instant's Bliss, The Preacher Addresses the Seminarians, Coming into the Kingdom, and Little Religion are good examples. Take a look at Into the Instant's Bliss:

Into The Instant's Bliss

Into the instant's bliss never came one soul
Whose soul was not possessed by Christ
Even in the eons Christ was not.

And still: some who cry the name of Christ
Live more remote from love
Than some who cry to a void they cannot name.

The poem sounds like something the Apostle John could have written to the seven churches in the book of Revelation. the approach resembles the approach in the Apostle John's letters: I know your good works but, I have this against you. It's convicting, calling out hypocricy clearly and without hesitation but, still extending grace by identifying the problem and offering the contrast and solution that souls need to be "possessed by Christ" and His love and not merely, in the words of the Apostle Paul, a noisy gong or clanging cymbal that "cry the name of Christ."

Apart from Wiman's spiritual poetry, I also loved the poem Black Diamond, one of the poems in the collection not dealing with spirituality. Wimen's poetry has a beautiful sound to it, I can't pretend that I understood the meaning of every poem but, the feel and sound of the words have a lyrical musicality to it, like tongues, that, even if I couldn't understand the meaning of the poem, there was a beauty to be experienced.

[Paul Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

HAVING ENJOYED WIMAN'S anthology Joy, I felt inspired to catch up on his own poetry. This is not his most recent collection, as he published one last year, but rather the successor to Every Riven Thing.

Once again we get dollops of Hopkins in the sound of the poems ("big-boned Joe Sloane shrivelcrippled / tight as tumbleweed") and in their sense (wonder streaked with anguish), but I suspect the crucial influence here is Dante. Once in the West strikes me as a miniature Divina Commedia.

Part One, "Sungone Noon," mainly recalls Wiman's childhood and youth in west Texas, but feels more infernal than Wordsworthian, heat-blasted, desperate, scoured of anything that feels like meaning or hope.

Part Two, "My Stop is Grand," is a little like Purgatory--mainly work and moving in seemingly endless circles, but with little explosions of grace punctuating the grayness, like the "grace of sparks" seen on the Chicago El train in the poem that lends its title to the section, mentioned again in the section's concluding "Poem for Edward Thomas."

So Part Three, "More Like the Stars," should be paradise, but paradisos are not easy to pull off my friends...not easy at all. The title certainly points towards Paradiso--"stelle," "stars," is the final word of all three parts of The Divine Comedy. But what we get as the conclusion to Wiman's small-scale Divine Comedy is an even smaller scale Divine Comedy, a three-part poem. It begins in a hospital (a good stand-in for hell, I think), proceeds through the faith-under-strain section that opens with the lines "What rest in faith / wrested / from grief," then concludes with Wiman at Shedd Aquarium with his family, which actually makes a convincing heaven.

I ordered the new collection, Survival Is a Style, and hope to get to it sooner than six years from now.

[Allison Wolff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way Christian Wiman uses sound and syllables reminds me, often, of Gerard Manley Hopkins, my favorite poet of all time. The subject matter of quite a few of Wiman's poems escapes me, however - hence the 4 stars.

Some of my favorite poems in this collection were "Music Maybe," "Black Diamond," "Rest Home," "Winterlude," "Love's Last," "Into the Instant's Bliss," "Coming into the Kingdom," "Varieties of Quiet," and much of section 3, which doesnt have individually titled poems.

I haven't read much of Wiman's other writing but know he writes a lot about wrestling with faith - there's a lot of that in this collection, some of it beautiful, some of it sad, some of it irreverent. This passage from "The Preacher Addresses the Seminarians" is all three:

"I tell you sometimes mercy means nothing
but release from this homiletic hologram, a little fleshstep

sideways, as it were, setting passion on autopilot (as if it weren’t!)
to gaze out in peace at your peaceless parishioners:

boozeglazes and facelifts, bad mortgages, bored marriages,
a masonry of faces at once specific and generic,

and here and there that rapt famished look that leaps
from person to person, year to year, like a holy flu.

All these little crevices into which you’ve crawled
like a chubby plumber with useless tools:

Here, have a verse for your wife’s death.
Here, have a death for your life’s curse."

[Marshall A. Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wiman quickly became one of my favourite poets between his collection Every Riven Thing and his interpretations of Osip Mandelstam’s poems in Stolen Air.

Overall I enjoy Wiman’s style and content, so this collection was expectedly lovely. From his playing with the sound of language, to his rumination on the links (or disconnects) between the spiritual and tangible, the poems were a delight. Though I think I still prefer the two collections mentioned above to this one, this collection did introduce me to a couple of my all time favourite of Wiman’s poems.

My favourites in this collection were

Blink
Rest home
Even the demon
Coming into the kingdom

And I’ve added Blink to the collection of poems I’d like to memorize if I ever get around to it.