He Held Radical Light, Christian Wiman
He Held Radical Light, Christian Wiman
List: $14.95 | Sale: $10.47
Club: $7.47

He Held Radical Light
The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art

Author: Christian Wiman

Narrator: John Lescault

Unabridged: 3 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/11/2018

Synopsis

A moving meditation on memory, oblivion, and eternity by one of our most celebrated poetsWhat is it we want when we can’t stop wanting? And how do we make that hunger productive and vital rather than corrosive and destructive? These are the questions that animate Christian Wiman as he explores the relationships between art and faith, death and fame, heaven and oblivion. Above all, He Held Radical Light is a love letter to poetry, filled with moving, surprising, and sometimes funny encounters with the poets Wiman has known. Seamus Heaney opens a suddenly intimate conversation about faith; Mary Oliver puts half of a dead pigeon in her pocket; A. R. Ammons stands up in front of an audience and refuses to read. He Held Radical Light is as urgent and intense as it is lively and entertaining―a sharp sequel to Wiman’s earlier memoir, My Bright Abyss.

About Christian Wiman

Christian Wiman is the author of ten books, including a memoir, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (FSG, 2013); Every Riven Thing (FSG, 2010), winner of the Ambassador Book Award in poetry; Once in the West (FSG, 2014), a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in poetry; and Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam. He teaches religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.

About John Lescault

John Lescault has been an audiobook narrator for over twenty-five years and has recorded more than three hundred titles, spanning works of fiction and nonfiction. He has also provided narration for NPR’s Performance Today, Nightline, and Deaf Mosaic. He has appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra as Beethoven and Dvorak at the Kennedy Center.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Julie on May 05, 2024

There is a fragility to this slender investigation of poetry’s intersection with faith, underscored by the lingering question “what does one want when one cannot stop wanting?” Poet and Yale professor of Divinity Christian Wiman, who served as editor-in-chief of Poetry from 2003 to 2013, reflects on......more

Goodreads review by Billy on November 12, 2018

Christian Wiman is one of my favorite writers. His prose––and poetry, albeit to a different degree––is both dense and smooth. He writes sentences that start, stop, redirect themselves for words, lines, or even pages at a time, and then somehow end up back where they started, but bring with them a ne......more

Goodreads review by Lee on August 09, 2019

Snarl at me if you will —or call me a philistine— but this book is a piece of candy. Allow me to explain. Having had faith as a core part of my whole life and identity and, having been someone who reads and writes poetry (I’m not claiming it’s any good), I really appreciate books in this rare niche.......more

Quotes

“Readers who allow themselves to be swept along by Wiman’s beautiful style and oblique considerations will come away with fresh strategies for unpacking faith in the contemporary world.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[Wiman] shares these stories with grace and humility and leaves readers with a breathless sense of the revelatory.” Library Journal (starred review)

“The link between art and faith, as seen by a noted poet…‘It is hard learning to live ‘one hour higher than the torments,’ Wiman writes, quoting Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer. This moving book explores not only those torments, but also the understanding that art can provide.” Kirkus Reviews

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List