Poetry, Paradox, and the Absence of God

A poet who has lived two decades with incurable cancer on what faith sounds like when God feels more absent than present. Christian Wiman joins Mark Labberton to talk poetry, suffering, and friendship.

“The presence of God, less so. I experience the absence more than the presence.”

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Wiman reflects on writing “Every Riven Thing” after a single church service, surviving a last-resort clinical trial, and the friendship behind his new book with Miroslav Volf. Together they discuss the paradox at the heart of poetry, grief that explodes into joy, and why joy asks something of us. They also weigh Heschel and Lewis’s clarity, the friendless American male, and chance turned into destiny by constant choice.