{"id":16470,"date":"2023-12-04T18:34:50","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T23:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=16470"},"modified":"2023-12-04T18:34:52","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T23:34:52","slug":"episode-566-christian-wiman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-566-christian-wiman","title":{"rendered":"Episode 566 – Christian Wiman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 566:
\nChristian Wiman<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_566_-_Christian_Wiman.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“My most settled belief is that there is a unity, that we’re not inhabiting a chaos, there is a unity of experience. A lot of time it doesn’t look like that, but we’re given glimpses when it does. And part of that is the communication we have with each other. It’s often nonverbal, but poetry has a lot to do with that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With his new book, ZERO AT THE BONE: Fifty Entries Against Despair<\/a> (FSG), Christian Wiman<\/a> fuses essay, poem, memoir and anthology in a singular work that explores how the act of writing a poem is a gesture of faith. We talk about the varieties of despair and joy, the question of whether the world is chaos or has order, and whether the relationship between art and life is a tension or an actual antipathy (as Henry James would have it). We also get into the urgency of mortality and the rare cancer that almost killed Christian on three separate occasions (including this year), the notion of having a calling and the difference between given<\/em> and earned<\/em> callings, who we’re really<\/em> trying to reach when we write a poem, whether Philip Larkin’s Aubade<\/a> is a poem of pure despair, how literature has taken the place of sacred texts, and what he’s learned from teaching at Yale Divinity School. We also discuss The Void & how to tune it out, his thoughts on faith and Christ and how the incarnation of God in Jesus sacralizes the physical world, where poetry began for him, whether joy is passed down epigenetically like trauma (allegedly) is, what it’s like having a Ninja Blender for a brain, coming around on poets in translation like Yehuda Amichai<\/a>, the meaning of existence, and a lot more (I mean, if you can have<\/em> a lot more after the meaning of existence). Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read Zero At The Bone<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“Any work of art is in some way an action against despair. . . . The act of writing a poem is a gesture of faith.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n