Poetry Editor on Speaking in Tongues
Posted by: David Bunch
Christian Wiman (editor of Poetry magazine) had this to say about his religious roots in a recent interview.
Christian Wiman (editor of Poetry magazine) had this to say about his religious roots in a recent interview.
CW: Snyder, yes. It’s a little town in far west Texas, about an hour and a half south of Lubbock. We were Baptists, you know—"charismatic evangelicals" is how we defined ourselves.Wiman has an incurable disease and goes on to discuss his return to his religious roots.
P&W: That sounds Pentecostal.
CW: Yeah. It wasn’t snake-handling, or anything like that, but it was very visceral, very emotional.
P&W: Speaking in tongues?
CW: I never saw anyone do it, but it was certainly believed in. My childhood was just saturated in religion. We went to church three times a week—twice on Sunday, and Wednesday nights. We prayed before every meal. We used to have to memorize Bible verses and say them before the meals. It was the context in which we understood every aspect of our lives, and still is for my family.
P&W: You believed in God, Jesus, and so on?
CW: It never occurred to me to doubt it until I went to college. I never met a single person who wasn’t a true believer until I was eighteen years old, at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.
