Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems

Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems - Paperback

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$18.00
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Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems
  • Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems
Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems - Paperback

Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems - Paperback

by Christian Wiman
$18.00
$18.00

Book Overview

A visionary selection from one of America's foremost poets

One of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American poetry, Christian Wiman has forged a singular style that fuses a vivid and propulsive music with clear-eyed realism, wry humor, and visionary lament. In his "daring and urgent" (The New York Times Book Review) memoir, My Bright Abyss, he asks, "What is poetry's role when the world is burning?" Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems might be read as an answer to that question.

From the taut forms of his first book to the darker, more jagged fluencies of his second, into the bold and pathbreaking poems of his last two collections, Hammer Is the Prayer bears the reckless, restless interrogations and the slashing lyric intensity that distinguish Wiman's verse. But it also reveals the dramatic and narrative abilities for which he has been widely praised--the junkyard man in "Five Houses Down" with his "wonder-cluttered porch" and "the eyesore opulence / of his five partial cars," or the tragicomic character in "Being Serious" who suffers "the world's idiocy / like a saint its pains."

Hammer Is the Prayer brings together three decades of Wiman's acclaimed poetry. Selected by the author, these poems reveal the singular music and metaphysical urgency that have attracted so many readers to his work and firmly assert his place as one of the most essential poets of our time.
ISBN9780374537319
Author Christian Wiman
PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedNovember 2017
LanguageENG- English
Pages224
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Nonfiction Poetry

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More by Christian Wiman

Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems

Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems - Paperback

Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems - Paperback

By Christian Wiman

About Christian Wiman

Christian Wiman was born and raised in west Texas. His poetry and criticism appears widely in magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and Slate. His first book won the Nicholas Roerich Prize, and he has won the Ruth Lilly and Wallace Stegner Fellowships. He lives in Chicago, where he is the editor of Poetry magazine.

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