A review by toniapeckover
Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet by Christian Wiman

2.0

I loved Wiman's essays here, and as always, his transparent wrestling with faith and religion. But the book is filled with criticism and review of poets and poetic forms I am not overly familiar with and it did become something of a slog for me. There's no obscuring Wiman's incisive intelligence and since the essays move through time, it's interesting to see his personal development (ouch, early Wiman is harsh!) I finally gave myself permission to skim some of the poetry critiques. Maybe I'll go back to them when I've taken a deeper dive into some of the poetry.