Loneliness and solidarity

Paradoxes and the past

Dear friends,

I loved reading your stories of action last week and reading the words you used to respond and affirm and explore each other’s actions. Thank you.

Christian Wiman’s new poetry collection — The Dance — was launched this week. I’m biased because I know Chris. But despite my bias, in this small instance, I’m also right. Speaking about poetry recently, he said:

“It is a powerful paradox that a poem of great loneliness can bring us great consolation. And more than that: solidarity, kinship, something that eases that original loneliness. I think the great battle of our time is the struggle for consciousness, both individually and collectively. But no collective consciousness can occur unless and until it is firmly rooted in many, many coherent and vital individual minds. Poetry can be a powerful aid to this, both for the individual and the collective.”

That opening line in particular, “a poem of great loneliness can bring us great consolation” is indeed a powerful paradox. I have found it true. I remember reading Patrick Kavanagh’s poem “Snail” and the line “I know the shadow-ways / Of self” entered into me in a way that has become a strange companion over decades. No poem of loneliness is easy to write, but writing it makes a certain solidarity possible: with yourself, with those who might read it later.

A destroyed — then partially restored — fresco. St. Peter’s Church, Basel, Switzerland, June 2026. Photo by Pádraig Ó Tuama

Christian new book opens with a kind of epigraph:

Emberling, amberman
worshiper of was

I asked the past
what I was meant to learn

and the past said
Burn

I love the burr sound in “ember”, “amber”, “worshiper” … and then the rhyme of “learn” with “burn” too. Ember and amber bring colours to mind, but also time — the dying of a fire, the preservation of resin through centuries. “[W]orshiper of was” drags us to that recognisable part of us that can be so devoted to the past that the present is barely present. (“These are the good old days. / Just wait and see.” the British poet Steve Turner writes in a fantastic book The King of Twist.)

But then the past speaks! Before even considering that imperative “Burn”, it’s worthwhile thinking of a speaking past. Often the past is commodified. “Return to the glory days of yesteryear!” is a phrase concocted in some elections or referenda (never mind that most of the people proposing the glory days would have been poorer, sicker, overworked, undersupported, isolated, and threatened in those days of glory).

But in Chris’s short poem, the past is not a frozen creature, manipulable to the whims of its contemporary commentators. It has a voice, and this is surely a thing that can freeze us — with a fear or at least the possibility of accountability. “Burn” is what it says here, perhaps an invitation to detachment or warmth, but who knows what the poet means? And very probably even the poet isn’t completely sure. The past has spoken; it will take time to discern what it meant.

(And, of course, the past does speak, this is not what my niece would call “only poetry”. Bryan Stevenson and Karen Murphy remind of the past’s voice, through their scholarship and actions.)

I think we all have possibilities of listening to the lonely voice that communicates in powerful paradoxes to us. This morning, in a journal, I found that I had written “The driven life abandons comedy, whimsy, delight, interruptions, not stopping by the road to see what can be said.” Beyond whether this statement is correct or not, I am most struck by the contradiction: “see what can be said”. Surely it would have been “see what can be seen”. Whatever the strange electric revealed by the slip, I am moved to remind myself, amidst agendas and demands, that whimsy and comedy are in the marrow around which serious bones grow, which for me, is so often in language.

Friends: What has your past taught you about loneliness? And how do you live well with this learning? Share it with us, and let us see the paradoxes unfold.

And buy The Dance if you are so inclined. Christian Wiman’s interview with Krista from many years ago is a timeless classic.

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Poetry in the World

A list of my events: Online and in the U.S. (Santa Fe, NM; Frenchtown, NJ; Cambridge and Stockbridge, MA) and England (Kettering)

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August 9–13, Santa Fe, New Mexico

I’m leading a four-day intensive workshop at Modern Elder Academy called “Poetry as a Common Language”. We’ll read, write, and discuss poems on finding and deepening connection. (For more information, click on the date heading.)

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August 27–30, Kettering, England

I’m absolutely delighted to be returning to this year’s Greenbelt Festival, a gathering of arts, activism, and belief in England. (For registration info, click on the date heading.)

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September 14, Online

I’ll be leading evening worship alongside Nadia Bolz-Weber and Doug Gay as part of the Festival of Preaching, beginning at 5:30 p.m. GMT. (For registration info, click on the date heading.)

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October 1, Frenchtown, New Jersey

Join me at Frenchtown Bookshop for a conversation and book signing, beginning at 6:30 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

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October 13, Online

I’ll be leading a virtual craft intensive on poetry and desire through Poets House, beginning at 6 p.m. ET. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

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October 30, Online

I’m delighted to be joining Ellen Bass’s wonderful Living Room Craft Talks Series for a discussion of the poetry of eros, beginning at 12 p.m. ET. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

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November 2, Cambridge, Massachusetts

I’ll be reading alongside Susan Stewart as part of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series, beginning at 8 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

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November 10, Online

I’m leading a virtual course on lyric address through Arvon, beginning at 7 p.m. GMT. (For registration info, click on the date heading.)

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December 18–20, Stockbridge, Massachusetts

I’m leading a retreat on poetry and prayer at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

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February 8, Online

Michelle Penn and I will be reading together in a virtual event with Café Writers, beginning at 7:30 p.m. GMT. (For more info, click on the date heading.)