<p><b>Christian Wiman braids poetry, memoir, and criticism to create an inspired, career-defining work. <br><br></b>Few contemporary writers ask the questions about faith, morality, and God that Christian Wiman does, and even fewer¿perhaps none¿do so with his urgency and eloquence. Wiman, an award-winning poet and the author of <i>My Bright Abyss</i>, lays the motion of his mind on the page in this genre-defying work, an indivisible blend of poetry, criticism, theology, and searing memoir. As Marilynne Robinson wrote, ¿[Wiman¿s] poetry and his scholarship have a purifying urgency that is rare in this world . . . [It] enables him to say new things in timeless language, so that the reader¿s surprise and assent are one and the same.¿<br><br><i>Zero at the Bone</i> begins with Wiman¿s preoccupation with despair, and through fifty brief pieces, he unravels its seductive appeal. The book is studded with the poetry and prose of writers who inhabit Wiman¿s thoughts, and the voices of Wallace S