Disfortune is not in the mainstream of American poetic speech, nor is it easily placed into any of the well-known poetic speech-camps that have arisen on its margins. Terse, haunting lyrics expose the irreducible contradictions of living, wherein "the talking-singing, the whole talking-/singing ball of yarn, begins to unravel." Deceptively casual in tone, these poems offer startling confrontations with "the unoriginal/oblivion," with "the contrived delicacy/of what is emptied and kept." Joe Wenderoth sees "fortune" as the mute history of events proceeding toward the ultimate security; his poems arise from "disfortune," from the need "Just to sing the song that's kept you/quiet/all this time." This book is a rare occurrence, marking not only a new intimacy with the world, but also a remembering of the determined motion of intimacy itself.

Disfortune: Poems

Literature & Fiction

Wenderoth, Joe

Poetry

Wesleyan University Press

Disfortune is not in the mainstream of American poetic speech, nor is it easily placed into any of the well-known poetic speech-camps that have arisen on its margins. Terse, haunting lyrics expose the irreducible contradictions of living, wherein “the talking-singing, the whole talking-/singing ball of yarn, begins to unravel.” Deceptively casual in tone, these poems offer startling confrontations with “the unoriginal/oblivion,” with “the contrived delicacy/of what is emptied and kept.” Joe Wenderoth sees “fortune” as the mute history of events proceeding toward the ultimate security; his poems arise from “disfortune,” from the need “Just to sing the song that’s kept you/quiet/all this time.” This book is a rare occurrence, marking not only a new intimacy with the world, but also a remembering of the determined motion of intimacy itself.

Disfortune: Poems (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

It Is If I Speak (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

In the epigraph to Joe Wenderoth's new volume of poetry, a herdsman, exhorted by Oedipus to speak the truth, replies "It is if I speak that I will be destroyed." Wenderoth's poetry is sparse, nihilistic ― and sometimes witty. Publishers Weekly wrote that, "Like Stevens, Wenderoth has a passion for philosophical ideas; at the same time he follows Williams' dictum: no ideas but in things. The result is poetry that is intellectually charged but whose final fidelity is to the senses." His new book has the dignity of a sincere and ferocious despair. In the narratives of these poems, "owing is all that really happens," and lives are shaped by the refusal to "sink dumbly into tolerance of a spectacle."

Letters to Wendy’s is an outrageous, tragic, genre-bending novel written over the course of a year on comment cards from the fast-food chain restaurant Wendy’s. Through the letters, the book traces a year in the life and thoughts of an unnamed narrator obsessed not only by Biggies and Frosties, but also by consumerism, pornography, and mortality.

Letters to Wendy's

Humor & Satire

Wave Books

The bold and surprising imagination of Joe Wenderoth is everywhere present in these essays moving fluidly between aesthetics, obscenity, America, censorship, and the craft of poetry. Fans of his previous work know he is one of those rare figures who travels between pop culture, poetry, and cultural critique, and all will be thrilled to find his uncompromising and inimitable sensibility on brilliant display.
Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore. His books include the novel Letters To Wendy’s (Verse Press, 2000) and the poetry collections It Is If I Speak and Disfortune (Wesleyan, 2000, 1995). Agony: A Proposal is forthcoming from Verse Press. He teaches at the University of California Davis, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft's Secret Self

United States

“Joe Wenderoth is a brilliant writer, original and subversive, sensitive and strange. I read his work with awe and admiration.”—Ben Marcus
“Joe Wenderoth's brave new poetic talent is like nothing so much as a live wire writing its own epitaph in sparks. [His poems] throb brilliantly with a sense of the 'too much.' . . . But in Wenderoth's case the too much is the too little or the too ordinary—a very remarkable discovery to have made so late in the history of poetry. Philip Larkin and a few American poets have approached it, but Wenderoth's instrument is sharper than theirs; he makes quick cuts in the meat of the ordinary, which is the meat of the impossible.”—Cal Bedient
This clear-eyed new work from a favorite young poet is searching and solemn, dissatisfied with artificial condolences and pat maxims. Joe Wenderoth’s determination in the face of harsh realities is what rescues us, and him, from hopelessness.
 “Luck”
 So a screaming woke you just in time An animal’s scream, or animals’. What kind of animal it was doesn’t matter, and cannot, in any case, be determined. The point is you are saved. Your mouth has been opened.
 Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore and is the author of five books of prose and poetry. He teaches at the University of California, Davis.

No Real Light

"Best-known for his gritty and uproarious prose poetry collection Letters to Wendy's, Wenderoth began his career with two books of gimlet-eyed, world-weary, hard-hitting poetry. Now he returns to verse, favoring (as before) relatively short poems, often twelve lines or fewer, most of which crackle with a bleakness that's part gallows humor, part outrage, and part despair."—Publishers Weekly, starred review of No Real Light
"A perverse, sometimes pretty, obscene, and confounding collection of one page meditative missives . . . trimmed with lunatic fringe."—Rolling Stone review of Letters to Wendy's
Whether it's addressing the grotesque in daily scenes or upsetting the norms of professional culture, Joe Wenderoth's fifth collection resonates with his signature intellect and disturbing humor. He is at once an aesthete and an iconoclast who brings inventive force to American poetry.
Early Capitalism
they are perfecting the pillow with which you are being suffocated
now it sings to you and shows you pictures
Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of No Real Light, The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft's Secret Self, and Letters to Wendy's. Wesleyan University Press published his first two books of poems: Disfortune and It Is If I Speak. He is a professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

If I Don't Breathe How Do I Sleep

"Best-known for his gritty and uproarious prose poetry collection Letters to Wendy's, Wenderoth began his career with two books of gimlet-eyed, world-weary, hard-hitting poetry. Now he returns to verse, favoring (as before) relatively short poems, often twelve lines or fewer, most of which crackle with a bleakness that's part gallows humor, part outrage, and part despair."—Publishers Weekly, starred review of No Real Light"A perverse, sometimes pretty, obscene, and confounding collection of one page meditative missives . . . trimmed with lunatic fringe."—Rolling Stone review of Letters to Wendy'sWhether it's addressing the grotesque in daily scenes or upsetting the norms of professional culture, Joe Wenderoth's fifth collection resonates with his signature intellect and disturbing humor. He is at once an aesthete and an iconoclast who brings inventive force to American poetry.Early Capitalismthey are perfecting the pillowwith whichyou are being suffocatednow it sings to youand shows you picturesJoe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of No Real Light, The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft's Secret Self, and Letters to Wendy's. Wesleyan University Press published his first two books of poems: Disfortune and It Is If I Speak. He is a professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

If I Don't Breathe How Do I Sleep (Wave Books)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wenderoth, Joe. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wenderoth, Joe

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wenderoth, Joe. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Disfortune: Poems

Disfortune: Poems (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

It Is If I Speak (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

It Is If I Speak (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

Letters to Wendy's

The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft's Secret Self

No Real Light

No Real Light

If I Don't Breathe How Do I Sleep

If I Don't Breathe How Do I Sleep (Wave Books)