Over at The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion’s David Yezzi has a review of poet Christian Wiman’s new book, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, a book he praises for its serious consideration of the viability of faith in the modern world and in the face of death. Wiman is a well-known poet and editor of Poetry magazine who, in recent years, was diagnosed with a rare and incurable form of cancer, and the book is his spiritual and literary meditation on Christianity and poetry in light of these events. In the review, David highlights the stark contrast between Wiman’s “weighty account of modern faith” and the airy simplicity of other contemporary accounts of spirituality:
When did the spiritual life become just another trapping of “lifestyle”—an urgency not at the heart of the good life but of la dolce vita? As one telling example, the protagonist of Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love”—Julia Roberts in the 2010 movie—seeks fulfillment and happiness though prayer, yes, but amplified by world travel, pizza and a hot romance with a Brazilian businessman. It’s spiritual quest as spa treatment for the soul. By contrast, the poet Christian Wiman’s “My Bright Abyss” would make an unlikely feel-good film. Part memoir, part statement of Christian faith, part commonplace book, this slim volume of spiritual and literary meditations unsettles more than it soothes. Life’s “tiny vanities” constitute for Mr. Wiman seductive alternatives to faith: “a publication, a flirtation, a strong case made for some weak nihilism—nights all adagios and alcohol as my mind tore luxuriously into itself.” The deepening of Mr. Wiman’s faith occasions in him not comfort but continual unease.
Read the full piece here.