The Long Home

Christian Wiman

Before Christian Wiman became editor of Poetry, his debut volume earned the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize and garnered widespread praise. Reissued to coincide with the publication of Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet, this stunning collection confirms Wiman’s status as one of the most remarkable poets of his generation.

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ISBN: 9781556592690

Format: Paperback

What I Know

These fields go farther than you think they do.
That darkness is my father walking away.
It is my shadow that I tell this to.

This stillness is not real. The cloud that grew
Into an old man’s face didn’t stay.
These fields go farther than you think they do.

The sun loves shattered things, and loves what’s new.
I love you so much more than I can say.
It is my shadow that I tell this to.

He is not sleeping, that bird the bugs crawl through.
Don’t touch. Don’t cry. Think good things. Pray.
These fields go farther than you think they do.

Some darknesses breathe, look back at you.
Under the porch a pair of eyes waits all day.
It is my shadow that I tell this to.

The things my father told me must be true:
There are some places you cannot play.
These fields go farther than you think they do.
It is my shadow that I tell this to.

About the Author

Christian Wiman is the author of two books of poetry, The Long Home (1998), which won the Nicholas Roerich Prize, and Hard Night (2005). His poems and his critical and personal essays appear widely, in such magazines as The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker. He served as editor of Poetry magazine from 2003–2013.

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Reviews

“So substantive and wise that that it hardly seems like a first book.” —San Jose Mercury News

“Joseph Campbell once said that what we really seek is not the meaning of life but the feeling of being alive, the experience of the living moment. In page after page of The Long Home Wiman renders such moments.” —Sewanee Review

“A poet we will reckon with over time.” —Kirkus Reviews

“No one collection commits a poet unalterably to a style or a set of preoccupations, but The Long Home already establishes Christian Wiman as a legitimate heir to Frost.” —Ploughshares

“An extraordinary first book… Characterized by acute psychological insight, fluency in form and narrative structure, unusual intelligence and heart. This book is also heartbreaking, in a way that Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping is heartbreaking, or many poems of Randall Jarrell.” —Prairie Schooner

“A beautiful first collection.” —The Stranger