In his introduction, Wiman, who began this project because he was "somewhat confused" about the meaning of the word "joy," writes: "I have found that, for me, the best way of thinking through any existential problem is with poetry, which does not 'think through' such a problem so much as undergo it" (page xiii). A majority of the poems he has chosen do not mention the word, joy, but most capture instead "A moment of insight, then, a spot of time" (page xv). 

Wiman, who has a rare form of cancer, knows that joy exists often in the presence of suffering: "Joy is the only inoculation against the despair to which any sane person is prone, the only antidote to the nihilism that wafts through our intellectual atmosphere like sarin gas" (page xxiii-xxiiv).

This is a collection of poems that should be read slowly, and then again, a pond dipped into in times of grief or in times of unbridled joy.  These poems are not sweet and they are not mere fluff.  Often they present paradoxes that must be pondered;  other times they hold imagery and metaphors of pure bliss. These poems are not religious, yet many touch on the concept of faith--not only in a supreme being but also in nature, in memory, in humanity, in the power of words. Here is the last line of the poem "A Poem for the Epiphany" by Pablo Medina: "everything is death, everything is joy" (page 75).