Poetry jottings (i)

Christian Wiman builds worlds: his poems are so precise and so layered with experience and observation that the reader dwells within them. Sense unfailingly is sound and sound the substitute experience of being there, alive, not with the poet but in his stead. Five Houses Down is such a poem. As is the eponymous poem of The Long Home, his debute collection of 1998, more of which here. As a poetry collection it has become a retreat for this reader to dwell in, to reflect, to test assumptions – both linguistic and philosophical.  As good poetry should.