It Is If I Speak

by Wenderoth, Joe

• ISBN13: 9780819563903
• ISBN10: 0819563900
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-02-01
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

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."

Author Biography

JOE WENDEROTH, whose new work is published regularly in Triquarterly, Colorado Review, Seneca Review, and other journals, has captured the front cover of American Poetry Review, and continues to gather a following. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program, he is currently in the English Department at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota. Author of Disfortune (Wesleyan, 1995) and a chapbook The Endearment (1999), excerpts of his Letters to Wendy's are accessible on-line at Nerve.com

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
As Hour and Year Collapsed	1	(2)
First Impression	3	(1)
Promise	4	(1)
Meaning	5	(1)
The Only Fortunate Thing	6	(1)
Watching Home Movies	7	(1)
Native Quiet	8	(1)
``We Sleep More Than We Sleep''	9	(1)
The Thinking Instructor	10	(1)
Orpheus In Hell	11	(1)
Museum	12	(1)
Send New Beats	13	(2)
Restrictions	15	(5)
Pretty Girl	20	(1)
Instructions On How To Get Here	21	(1)
Alternate Instructions On How To Get Here	22	(1)
All That Really Happens	23	(1)
After The Mass Wedding	24	(1)
Lethe	25	(1)
The Shouts Of Children At Dusk	26	(1)
Home	27	(1)
Not Touching: Thetic Perserverance	28	(1)
King Of Illiterates	29	(1)
Untitled	30	(1)
Wend	31	(1)
Obscenery	32	(1)
Stalker	33	(1)
Poem	34	(1)
Palace Walls	35	(1)
Inter Esse: Against Lap Dances	36	(1)
To My Wife On Our First Anniversary	37	(1)
The Method	38	(1)
Each Sentence Is Into The Fast	39	(1)
The Administration Of The Registration	40	(1)
Unspeakably Early	41	(1)
Letter From a Most Loved American General, 1996	42	(1)
To Julianna	43	(1)
Things To Do Today	44	(5)
My Life	49	(2)
Human Moan	51	(1)
The Lie	52	(1)
Being	53	(2)
Knowledge	55	(1)
Nirvana	56	(1)
Juggernaut	57	(1)
Dream	58	(1)
Billy's Famous Lounge	59	(1)
To Darryl, Who Is Expected To Die Today In A Beloit Hospital	60	(1)
``Existence Is Not An Adjective For Pain''	61	(1)
Mishima	62	(1)
Science	63	(3)
Writer	66	(1)
Go-Go Bar	67	(1)
Back River Neck Road	68	(1)
Notes	69