Introduction

The subject, in a word, is despair, both public and private. The poets and spiritual seekers Christian Wiman and his wife Danielle Chapman are back to goad us, each with a new book. Their project is staring into the abyss, in the Nietzsche formula, to see if the abyss stares back, or talks back. And I think it does.

Christian Wiman and Danielle Chapman.

Listeners, you be the judge. Christian Wiman’s new book is Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair. It’s more interesting because the woman who broke his life open in love, most of 20 years ago, is in on the conversation. And it’s more urgent when we can all feel despair out there, coming on like a cold front—some say an epidemic of loneliness or melancholy.