My Bright Abyss + Zero at the Bone

My Bright Abyss + Zero at the Bone
By Christian Wyman

“my bright abyss” + “zero at the bone” by christian wyman

Of course, reading is one of our most interior activities. The words land in our own unique imaginary field, our minds free-associate on the images and content and we meaning-make in ways only we can. 

Last winter and spring found me confronting a potential cancer diagnosis and already being a cancer survivor one time it was a particularly rough experience. I was in my early thirties when I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. I did what I needed to do to get through it, felt and feel pretty fortunate at how it all went and did everything I could to put it behind me. I suppose I thought at the time that I had dealt with it but now, 20+ years later, probably I didn’t. I just got through. 

Getting cancer any time is fucked up. Getting it young is a specific kind of fucked up - not worse than any other - just specific. For me, it has been a reverberation that is always there, a slight ripple in the water of my being. So, having to deal with the possibility of cancer again brought it all back. 

I was mowing the lawn one spring day and listening to NPR and this guy was talking about cancer in ways that seemed interesting (so much out there that deals with cancer is decidedly not interesting trucking in lame tropes, see next book on the list for more). I found myself appreciating this person’s perspective. It was Christian Wiman, whom I had never heard of before. Turns out he was diagnosed with an awful type of cancer relatively young and had defied the odds and was living on, all while engaging being a husband and father to two girls and his writing/editing career. I was intrigued. 

Both books are similar enough to describe together. Abyss was written in closer proximity to his cancer diagnosis. It is shorter, maybe more concise. Whereas, Zero, written with some distance from initial diagnosis and with some life in between, is a bit further reaching, maybe less immediately dark. 

Both are meditations of sorts confronting difficulty through poetry. Wiman’s cancer diagnosis is in the background, subtext and rarely specifically referenced but knowing it exists adds a grindstone of reality to his inquiry. It’s also a meditation through some (though definitely not all) specifically Christian poetry. That is new territory for me as a reader. Raised Catholic and putting all that mess aside early in life I was curious to see how his perspective might land. It was alright, good even. Wiman’s questions and tone reflect the best part of Christian thought, contemplative, searching, and content with the process and efforts of inquiry over answers. 

Both Wiman’s writing and his poetic selections are haunting, eerie, and beautiful. I found so much space in these books to engage my own fears and questions and a lot of grist for emboldening my own courage to face more fully into what I was being confronted with. Wiman and his poetic gifts both as curator and writer prove to be a steady and stable guide to go beyond spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity so prevalent in different “healing” circles. 

A taste of his way of making a point; “Many writers have written about the liberating experience of great art, but what if we are not the only ones being freed? ‘The feeling remains.’ wrote Teresa of A’vila, ‘that God is on the journey too.” (Zero at the Bone, p. 22).

-Michael McMahon