really do not like his cover designs - they do not help the uninitiated to know him

I believe this is the first book of poetry I've read basically from cover to cover. (Dag Mammarskjold's Markings isn't quite poetry, but it took me a while.)

So, yea, all 90 pages consumed. Yet, I don't really think we are to consume poetry, like we do a novel. It's more like a bite you savor. And I'm not sure how well I've learned to savor. Some day - here's one of those bucket list aspirations - I'd love to take a poetry class and actually learn something about it. For now, no ratings can be given. I have no idea how to "rate" the quality of poetry.

To me, poetry feels like painting emotions with words. Direct, concrete stuff I'm able to "get." Much of Wiman soared above me like a bird. Nevertheless, "to get" it no doubt misses the point. Maybe I should rather be "got."

Here are a few of my favorite lines:

"I need a space for unbelief to breathe.
I need a form for failure, since it is what I have."

(from the bit of the prologue)

---

"He talked of nothingness until it wasn't.
He bragged his gravity into God.

...

He names is love by naming what he hates.
Joy generalizes. Pain individuates."

---

"What I should have answered is that there are no heretics, or that there are only heretics; that humans - mere and mirrored creatures that we are - move toward God in language, and to speak language is to profane him." [This quote comes from A Heresy, which was prose,... I think.]

Some of the poems need the whole thing, and perhaps it profanes them to cut lines out like I have. And Someone Wrote It Down is too good not to quote the whole thing, but I won't here.

---

"Today I woke and believed in nothing.
A grief at once intimate and unfelt,
like the death of a good friend's dog."

---

"To be is to be confronted with a void,
a blankness, a blackness that both appeals and appalls.
Once known--known by the void, I mean--one has three choices.
Walk away, and unlearn the instinct of awe.
Walk along, and learn to believe that awe asks nothing of you.
Are you with me, love?



(For love read faith.)"

---

"The more I think the more I feel
reality without reverence is not real.

The more I feel the more I think
that God himself has brought me to his brink
wherein to have more faith means having less.
And love's the sacred name for loneliness."
(From the epilogue)

... I don't want to write the rest of epilogue... it's beautiful.

I hope I haven't quoted too much (and broken copywrite laws). I hope I leave you wanting more. To me, it was wonderful, and believe it or not, a hard book to put down.

Some startlingly touching/moving/thought-provoking poems in here. ( )