#christian wiman
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#made this for myself honestly#all my friends are finding new beliefs#christian wiman#shitposting#mine
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Not long before her death, Anna Kamieńska wrote what I think is her best poem (available in English, at any rate), a stark, haunting, and insidiously hopeful little gem called "A Prayer That Will Be Answered." The title is worth some stress, in both senses of that word: "A Prayer That Will Be Answered."
Lord let me suffer much
and then die
Let me walk through silence
and leave nothing behind not even fear
Make the world continue
let the ocean kiss the sand just as before
Let the grass stay green
so that the frogs can hide in it
so that someone can bury his face in it
and sob out his love
Make the day rise brightly
as if there were no more pain
And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane
bumped by a bumblebee's head
(tr. by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak)
This is an uncanny poem. It gives God all power (the continuance of the world) and no power (it was going to continue anyway). It is implicitly apophatic, you might say. That is, it erases what it asserts: it is a prayer to be reconciled to a world in which prayer does not work.
Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair
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Christian Wiman // Janet Fitch
#christian wiman#janet fitch#from "White Oleander#dark academia#chaotic academia#classic academia#light academia#classic literature#poetry#book quotes#libraries#books#relatable quotes
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Christian Wiman, “The End of Prayer” [ID in ALT]
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"Hope” by Palestinian artist, Sliman Mansour
(Guillaume Gris)
* * * *
Faith is a grace, not an achievement. And there are times in human existence when imagination as consolation is a violation of life and a desecration of grief.
Here is what I mean:
The mind may sort it out and give it names—
When a man dies he dies trying to say without slurring
The abruptly decaying sounds. It is true
That only flesh dies, and spirit flowers without stop
For men, cows, dung, for all dead things; and it is good, yes—
But an incarnation is in particular flesh
And the dust that is swirled into a shape
And crumbles and is swirled again had but one shape
That was this man. When he is dead the grass
Heals what he suffered, but he remains dead,
And the few who loved him know this until they die.
Galway Kinnell, “Freedom, New Hampshire”
[Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair
by Christian Wiman]
#Hope#Sliman Mansour#Guillaume Gris#Zero At The Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair#Christian Wiman#poetry#poem#words and writing#Galway Kinnell
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that Christ is always stronger in our brother's heart than in our own, which is to say, first, that we depend on others for our faith, and second, that the love of Christ is not something you can ever hoard. Human love catalyzes the love of Christ.
Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss
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I have this hunger in me that is endless
I turned to literature like a maniac. I mean, I was - I just was reading, you know, five hours a day and memorizing all these things and convinced that nothing mattered but being a great poet, and, yeah, that's what filled the void for 20 years. I mean it never did it, but I certainly tried to make it fill that void...
I have this hunger in me that is endless, and I think everyone probably has it. Maybe they find different ways of dealing with it, whether it's booze or excessive exercise or excessive art or whatever. I tried to answer it with poetry for years and hit a wall with that. And finally, I decided, or rather - I didn't decide. I discovered that the only answer to that hunger was God. Answer is wrong, I guess. The only solution to me was to live toward God without an answer...
— Christian Wiman, 'After 18 years living with cancer, a poet offers 'Fifty Entries Against Despair' (NPR Interview with Terry Gross, December 13, 2023)
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— christian wiman, "darkness starts".
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“God, if you’re a thing with ears: please, please.”
Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X
Richard Siken, War Of The Foxes
Christian Wiman, More Like The Stars
Never mind. I invented you. I invented you, as far as my purposes go. I invented loving you and I invented your death. I have my tricks and my trap doors, too.
Alice Munro, from Collected Stories; “Tell me Yes or No,”
Marina Tsvetaeva, tr. by Elaine Feinstein from, “I’m glad your sickness.”
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis
“(…) and then there’s the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can’t be quiet anymore.”
Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things; The Quiet Machine
H.D., The Look-Out
Akosua Afiriyie-Hwedie, In My Version
Lucille Clifton, The Death of Crazy Horse
repetition in poetry // part v
(part i) (part ii) (part iii) (part iv)
#elizabeth acevedo#richard siken#christian wiman#alice munro#marina tsvetaeva#robert frost#sarah kane#ada limón#h.d.#akosua afiriyie-hwedie#lucille clifton#poetry#repetition#quotes
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“In the end we love the line love cannot cross.
In the end we fall for what we fail.
Forget friendship. Ardor.
Forget the years that only grow harder
as the soul recedes in what the years bring,
grown alien to any touchable thing.
Touch me. As I am. As you can.
My heart a bird’s heart just beyond your hand.”
“Flight,” Christian Wiman, from Survival is a Style
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Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair
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- Warsan Shire, "Extreme Girlhood"
- Christian Wiman, "Music, Maybe"
[all photos are my own]
#hitting you with another web-weaving wednesday#photos are my own#warsan shire#christian wiman#darshana suresh#loneliness#homesick#home#can't go home#homesickness#alone#lonely#nostalgia#aching#yearning#poetry#web weaving
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i don’t want to be a spice store by Christian Wiman
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Darkness Starts
A shadow in the shape of a house
slides out of a house
and loses its shape on the lawn.
Trees seek each other
as the wind within them dies.
Darkness starts inside of things
but keeps on going when the things are gone.
Barefoot careless in the farthest parts of the yard
children become their cries.
-Christian Wiman, from Hard Night (Copper Canyon Press, 2005)
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Drawing by Auguste Rodin
* * * *
There is a sense in which love’s truth is proved by its end, by what it becomes in us, and what we, by virtue of love, become. But love, like faith, occurs in the innermost recesses of a person’s spirit, and we can see only inward in this regard, and not very clearly when it comes to that. And then, too, there can be great inner growth and strength in what seems, from the outside, like pure agony or destruction. In the tenderest spots of human experience, nothing is more offensive than intellectualized understanding. “Pain comes from the darkness / And we call it wisdom,” writes Randall Jarrell. “It is pain.”
My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman
[alive on all channels]
#Auguste Rodin#about art#love#quotes#My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer#Christian Wiman#alive on all channels
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