Ascent/Descent

"Walter Wangerin's Ascent/Descent is a book all but unique in my experience: its components are biographical, geographical, and--how to name it?--obliquely theological. But in all of the collection's five sections, the principal word that leaps to my mind is lyrical. Rendering the elaborate narrative of his Virginia and Walter, realizing the hieratic voice of Rilke, even translating the Dies irae, so on, Wangerin's mouth-fillingly rich language draws us so completely into his material that we are unable (and glad of it) to extricate ourselves. Pluperfectly absorbing!" --Sydney Lea, Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-2015)

Walter Wangerin, Jr. has won the National Book Award, the New York Times Best Children's Book of the Year Award, and several Gold Medallion Awards, including two best-fiction awards. The author of more than forty books, including poetry collections The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible (Cascade, 2017) and On an Age-Old Anvil (Cascade, 2018). Wangerin lives in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he is Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University.