Does Wiman keep getting better? Hard to say, but he's clearly no worse.

To wit: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/my-stop-is-grand/379325/

I suspect that this, like his others, will be a collection that another me returns to revisit and read through new eyes, eyes that will see what these cannot and miss what these have seen.

And that is good.

Though I write often, I have very rarely read poetry. If I'm honest, I find reading poetry to be mostly tedious and uninteresting – but I've come to realize that my personal writings have reached their ceiling and that in order for me to continue to create works which excite me, I would need to develop an appetite for others' writings. Thus I have now found myself with stacks of collections on my bedside table to consume with the hopes of discovering a poet who can help to stretch and inspire me. This is the first book on that journey, and I loved it. And I will read it again many times. Thank you, Christian, for Once in the West.

I gave this book five stars because I liked the poetic form and depth even if I didn't like the poems themselves

Melancholy, spare, unexpectedly religious. Really nice.

4.5 stars
Favorites:
Tell Me
Rust
Black Diamond
We Lived
Rest Home
Love’s Last
Under the heavened
My Stop is Grand
Wartime Train
Self-Portrait, with Preacher, Pain, and Snow
The River
Coming into the Kingdom
Between
Varieties of Quiet
What rest in faith
Something us suffering touches

I’m speechless

I don't read much contemporary poetry, but if this is any indication of the beauty that is out there I definitely should start. Wiman's poems are evocative and emotional and spiritual and sometimes I can't quite place my finger on why, but I feel something powerful. There's at moments a welding of the crass and vulgar with the sacred that might strike some as insensitive (or blasphemous), but that signaled a grounded, complex spirituality to me. There's a lot here to dig into more fully and I'm excited to do that.