{"id":74085,"date":"2018-10-04T12:55:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T16:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=74085"},"modified":"2018-10-04T17:58:57","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T21:58:57","slug":"ct-poet-christian-wiman-helps-us-tune-our-ears-to-silence-so-gods-voice-wont-be-lost-in-the-noise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=74085","title":{"rendered":"(CT) Poet Christian Wiman helps us tune our ears to silence, so God’s voice won’t be lost in the noise"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
[Christian] Wiman is worth listening to because he is himself an accomplished poet and, thanks in part to a decade at the helm of Poetry<\/span> magazine, he is intimately acquainted with the lives and the works of so many of the best poets of the last century. With Wiman as our guide, we witness his highly personal, sometimes surprising encounters with poets\u2014among them Heaney and Oliver\u2014and what those encounters reveal about the relationship between the life (and faith) of the artist and the art itself. We are also shown how<\/em> Wiman reads poems, thus becoming more perceptive readers ourselves without any heavy-handed lessons in \u201chow to read a poem.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But Wiman is also worth listening to because he is a dying poet and a dying man. He is dying in the sense that we are, each of us, dying, but his dying has more urgency and more pain: In 2005, on his 39th birthday, Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable form of blood cancer. Since then, as he has recounted in his earlier memoir, My Bright Abyss<\/span>, he has undergone hospitalizations, chemotherapies, and even a bone marrow transplant. While neither of his unconventional memoirs offers much medical detail, they offer enough to understand that a poet who can feel his own cells wreaking havoc is a poet for whom the reality of death is more real than it is for most of us.<\/p>\n

Why does this matter? It matters because, as Wiman writes, \u201cResurrection is a fiction and a distraction to anyone who refuses to face the reality of death.\u201d I claimed this book could tune our ears to silence, but I might have said it could tune our ears to what Wiman calls the \u201cfinal silence\u201d of death. I\u2019m sure you understand why I buried this analogy beneath five full paragraphs. Who among us is eager to confront the prospect of our own demise? The answer to this question goes far in explaining our collective addiction to the \u201cpandemonium of blab.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for the faithful seeker willing to press into the silence, or for the one who has had silence pressed upon his or her self by diagnosis or despair, Wiman is a relatable artist-guide.<\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Why should we listen to Christian Wiman?<\/p>\n

Because he is a dying poet and a dying man https:\/\/t.co\/HhakmyvCSG<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) September 17, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n