New poems from the most iconoclastic poet of his generation.

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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: 03/17/2000
ISBN: 9780819563903
Pages: 83
Weight: 0.34lbs
Size: 8.98h x 6.01w x 0.28d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 03/06/2000 pg. 108
Library Journal 04/15/2000 pg. 96