Named a Best Book of 2023 by Shelf Awareness

"Wiman offers a welcome tonic: poetic and philosophical reminders of how to get through troubling times. . . Wiman could charm an atheist out of a tree . . . [Zero at the Bone is] a profane, irreverent, freewheeling and necessary book. Readers of whatever creed will be jolted to lift their heads from their screens and turn them to the unfathomable heavens." --Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times

"Wiman is among the most distinguished Christian writers of his generation . . . Now he hopes that his experimental book--part poetry anthology, part memoir, part theological treatise--can help others live . . . The rewards for readers are immense and renewable . . . Word by word, Wiman resuscitates ancient ideas, from being to spirit, leaving our faces pressed hopefully against the here-and-now window of the poem." --Casey Cep, The New Yorker

"Christian Wiman [is] the greatest living devotional poet in the United States . . . Few poets, much less essayists, have been so enraptured with the subject of living with death as has Wiman, who has stared into the abyss and been transformed--though, fortunately, not into the abyss itself . . . [Zero at the Bone] exists in that uncomfortable but undeniable certainty that creation is imbued with sublime pain and awful beauty." --Ed Simon, Poetry

"The best poems show a mind at work; apparently the best theological essays do the same . . . Zero at the Bone is a humbly honest but daring invitation to put aside our lonely despair to seek truth with Wiman and a hundred other fallible, fumbling, loveable writers." --Whitney Rio-Ross, Fare Forward

"Zero at the Bone would be a strong competitor among my picks for a 'marooned on a desert island' reading club' . . . a deeply thoughtful, multi-layered exploration of the nature of despair--its origins, relationship to faith, and how we live in its enduring presence . . . The result is an exhilarating, confounding, comforting, and surprisingly fresh intellectual journey." --Ann Leamon, Arts Fuse

"[Zero at the Bone] is a dizzying book--at alternate points turbulent, psalm-like, revelatory--and altogether strangely uplifting. It is like nothing else I have read."--Josh Jeter, Christianity Today

"The shift in forms and tone throughout this incandescent mosaic keeps the reader alert and curious; each piece is an adventure, provocation, meditation, lesson, or attempted proof. A passionate literary religious thinker in the mode of Marilynne Robinson, Wiman is magnetizing and revelatory." --Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

"Wiman weaves together poetry, essay, and memoir in this dazzling, multivocal examination of and refusal to accept existential despair . . . Wiman's knowledge is vast, and his evocative imagery lingers in the mind . . . [Zero at the Bone is] a gorgeous ode to the power of poetry to grapple with life's most anguished moments." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"If there is one word to describe this beautiful and unsparing book, it is 'truthful': Christian Wiman interrogates pain, joy and God with a rare depth of honesty and a wonderful range of conversational partners, literary, mystical, scientific and more." --Archbishop Rowan Williams

"Over the years, readers have thrilled to Christian Wiman in his many avatars: master poet, illuminating literary critic, essayist, memoirist, anthologist. All of these urgent, intense Wimans work together here on a theme uniquely suited to his experiences and his 'ninja blender of a mind.' But this book is far more than just a collection of his readings and sufferings. It is a book, most memorably, of his enthusiasms, his volatile revelations, his hard-won joys. These fifty 'entries on despair' open on infinitudes. The most quintessentially Wiman of all his books so far, Zero at the Bone is astringently, transcendently human." --Amit Majmudar, author of Black Avatar: And Other Essays