Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair - Hardcover

Wiman, Christian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374603456 ISBN 13: 9780374603458

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc, 2024

Synopsis

Few contemporary writers ask the questions about faith, morality, and God that Christian Wiman does, and even fewer - perhaps none - do so with his urgency and eloquence. Wiman, the author of My Bright Abyss and an award-winning poet, lays the motion of his mind on the page in this genre-defying work, an indivisible blend of poetry, criticism, theology, and searing memoir. As Marilynne Robinson wrote, “[Wiman's] poetry and his scholarship have a purifying urgency that is rare in this world . . . It enables him to say new things in timeless language, so that the reader’s surprise and assent are one and the same.” Zero at the Bone begins with Wiman’s preoccupation with despair, and through fifty brief pieces, framed by two more, he unravels its seductive appeal. The book is studded with the poetry and prose of writers who inhabit Wiman’s thoughts, and the voices of Wallace Stevens, Lucille Clifton, Emily Dickinson, and more join his own. At its heart and Wiman’s, however, are his family - his young children (who ask their own invaluable questions, like “Why are you a poet? I mean why?”), his wife, and those he grew up with in West Texas. Wiman is the rare thinker who takes up the mantle of our greatest mystics and does so with an honest, profound, and contemporary sensibility. Zero at the Bone is a revelation.

About this title

About the Author

Christian Wiman is the author, editor, or translator of thirteen books of poetry and prose, including two memoirs, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art; Every Riven Thing, winner of the Ambassador Book Award; Once in the West, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and Survival Is a Style-all published by FSG. He teaches religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and at Yale Divinity School.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374603456
• ISBN 13: 9780374603458
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320