The Long Home [Paperback]

Christian Wiman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2007

Winner of the 11th annual Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, "The Long Home" is Christian Wiman's

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Winner of the 11th annual Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, "The Long Home" is Christian Wiman's first collection of poetry. The title narrative of the book is a riveting long poem from the viewpoint of a woman living in west Texas prior to the Great Depression. The story poignantly chronicles her history, from a childhood spent working in Texas cotton fields, through the life and death of her husband, and finally to the image of her grandson who "walks through walls he does not see." The beginning of his story appears to herald the end of hers, when "he waits, listening. It is all still now."

The lovely cadences in Wiman's shorter poems combine memory and emotion to bring an immediacy to the experiences within them. In "Revenant" a woman's passionate attraction to storms veils a furious death wish. The villanelle, "What I Know," merges the memory of a father's words with the emotional ties of parent and child that transcend time and death: "Some darknesses breathe, look back at you. / Under the porch a pair of eyes waits all day." Wiman's poetry is worth reading again and again. --Susan Swartwout --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

A tribute to a vanished world, Wiman's prize-winning first book consists of a long narrative and 12 short poems about rites of passage of a large "shadowed family" of sharecroppers in north Texas. Josie, Wiman's narrator, describes how three generations of her "day-laboring" family face up to nature and death in "the wide/ wind riffled whiteness someone farmed." Behind the narrator's (and Wiman's?) act of remembrance ("lives like smoke unspooling from a candle's/ Flame") is the ongoing moral development of character. Unachieved needs for nourishment deepen into a quest for quality of life. Rural Texas is presented realistically ("broken hoe, heel-bolts and clevises"), and often Josie's plain speech grows poetic: "I turned, dream-fingers linked with mine to lead/ Me home, the way I'd taken like a seam/ Laid out between the unsown fields of darkness." Although this sophisticated vision is at odds with gritty henhouse and warped floorboard, still one comprehends that "Home/ is momentary, a way/ of seeing." Wiman's empathetic story of belonging, endurance, and memory is a delight.?Frank Allen, Northampton Community Coll., Tannersville, PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (September 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556592698
• ISBN-13: 978-1556592690
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,273,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Subtle and Strong, October 20, 2000

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california-bookworm (California) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Long Home: Winner of the 1998 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize Library) (Paperback)

I learned of Christian Wiman from a marvelous essay he published in The Threepenny Review, in which he talks about reading Milton's "Paradise Lost" in Guatemala. Intrigued, I purchased "The Long Home," and I can say that I was not disappointed. While all the poems are not of equal strength, I've always felt that poets should be judged by their best work, and at least one poem, the sonnet "Revenant," is a masterpiece. In that work, more than in the longer title poem, Wiman shows his gifts as a rigorous thinker: "her white face under the unburdening skies / upturned to feel the burn that never came: / that furious insight and the end of pain." The shape of this poem, on every level, engages the tightly-coiled subject of a woman's singular obsession. I've read this poem many times and as with all great poems each time I discover something new. But the long poem of the book's title, while often moving and evocative of a particular time and place, seems to me to be too loose, occasionally approaching an arbitrarily clipped prose piece. (Wiman has, to my ear, a disagreeable habit of beginning lines with "Of," as in "without a speck / Of paving," "a level cloud / Of cotton," "a single lock / Of cotton..." and so forth. There are several similar examples on nearly every page of the poem.) Despite these reservations, overall this is an excellent volume and I will be eager to read Wiman's next book, and curious to see in what direction his work evolves.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars World view of a private history, January 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Long Home: Winner of the 1998 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize Library) (Paperback)

Wiman's work is largely humble -- even the grandest of moments are rather subdued (in a grand way, of course). The language is asthetically lovely and he skillfully avoids the over-sentementality that one would expect from a family memoir. Another reviewer accused Wiman of being a slave to the MFA grind, but I couldn't disagree more. Wiman may be young, but his work is wise and freshly rooted in an understanding of poetic and human history.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars great long poem, December 16, 2004

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[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Long Home: Winner of the 1998 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize Library) (Paperback)

This book is divided into two sections. The first contains a handful of Wiman's shorter poems. And to be honest, there is nothing particularly spectacular about them. That being said, section two is a long narrative, the title poem. And it is pretty good. It covers the life of woman growing up in West Texas in the early part of this century. Wiman writes very well in her voice and keeps her an interesting character. The story is an interesting one and he keeps the narrative flow going quite well. While I wasn't impressed with the poems in section one, I will be buying this book for the title poem.