July 26, 2026
Christian Wiman
Christian Wiman is the author, editor, or translator of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, including two memoirs, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art; Every Riven Thing, winner of the Ambassador Book Award; Once in the West, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and Survival Is a Style—all published by FSG. He teaches religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and at Yale Divinity School.
When famous suffering was just one of us,
love was license and license was law.
When evening ended. Memory was a matter
of matter. And a fastness lost to clocks.
Art is a means, not an end. If it’s a means to something trivial, then the work will be trivial. So you really do have to figure out what your ultimate concern is and whether your art serves that. The paradox (and mercy) is that art can reveal an ultimate concern. But then it—and you—must change.