There are dangers for an artist in any academic environment. Academia rewards people who know their own minds and have developed an… — Christian Wiman Academia Copy Share Image
“Memory is the basis of individual personality,” Miguel de Unamuno writes, “just as tradition is the basis of the collective personality of… — Christian Wiman Memory Copy Share Image
Mandelstam was an artistic genius, the sort that any century produces only a handful of. — Christian Wiman Art Copy Share Image
I can't think offhand of any American poets who have Mandelstam's urgency, but it's a different country and a different time, and… — Christian Wiman American poetry Copy Share Image
One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at… — Christian Wiman Be good Copy Share Image
Mandelstam's style is not singular. He could be stately and traditional, ribald and funny, hectic, elegiac. He could handle abstractions and ideas… — Christian Wiman Abstraction Copy Share Image
“Art can model the more difficult dynamic of transfiguring one’s life, but at some point the dynamic reverses itself: life models, or… — Christian Wiman Art Copy Share Image
“Religious despair is often a defense against boredom and the daily grind of existence. Lacking intensity in our lives, we say that… — Christian Wiman Christianity Copy Share Image
It's just that different emotions and perceptions demand different frequencies and intensities. — Christian Wiman Demand Copy Share Image
“I listen to a radio segment about scientists measuring the radioactive decay after such large-scale catastrophes as September 11 or the 2003… — Christian Wiman Science Copy Share Image
“How much of twentieth-century poetry, how much of my own poetry, is the cry of the damned?” — Christian Wiman Damnation Copy Share Image
“The sick person becomes very adept at distinguishing between compassion and pity. Compassion is someone else’s suffering flaring in your own nerves.… — Christian Wiman Compassion Copy Share Image
I can see now how deeply God's absence affected my unconscious life, how under me always there was this long fall that… — Christian Wiman Absence Copy Share Image
I don’t believe in “laying to rest” the past. There are wounds we won’t get over. There are things that happen to… — Christian Wiman Alive Copy Share Image
“What you must realize, what you must even come to praise, is the fact that there is no right way that is… — Christian Wiman Christianity Copy Share Image
What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent… — Christian Wiman Absence Copy Share Image
“Faith steals upon you like dew: some days you wake and it is there. And like dew, it gets burned off in… — Christian Wiman Faith Copy Share Image
It is easy enough to write and talk about God while remaining comfortable within the contemporary intellectual climate. Even people who would… — Christian Wiman Christ Copy Share Image
At some point you have to believe that the inadequacies of the words you use will be transcended by the faith with… — Christian Wiman Believe Copy Share Image
“whatever faith you emerge with at the end of your life is going to be not simply affected by that life but… — Christian Wiman Change Copy Share Image
I've never been able to write poetry without having vast tracts of dead time. Poetry requires a certain kind of disciplined indolence… — Christian Wiman Able Copy Share Image
“To have faith in a religion, any religion, is to accept at some primary level that its particular language of words and… — Christian Wiman Faith Copy Share Image
I honestly don’t know whether I am describing something essential about the way we know God or merely my own weakness of… — Christian Wiman Christianity Copy Share Image
One of the ways in which I feel close to God is writing poetry. — Christian Wiman Feels Copy Share Image
