No Real Light

by Joe Wenderoth

“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.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore. He is the author of No Real Light (Wave Books, 2007), The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft's Secret Self (Verse Press 2005) and Letters to Wendy's (Verse Press 2000). Wesleyan University Press published his first two books of poems: Disfortune (1995) and It Is If I Speak (2000). He is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

For more information on this author, go to:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/authors/46-...

Reviews

[Ethan Ksiazek · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m an idiot, but I prefer Wenderoth at his most definitive.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 4 out of 5]

God's Plan

First you are caused to careen and/or stagger
through situations of indescribable appeal
and mind-breaking vertiginous sadness.
Then you are smothered.

[Be Storie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite: 'Sitcom'

[Jared Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

There would have to be
a complete and hopeless destruction
of every grace, every distance.
And that is where I stand.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

First introduction to Wendroth. During an insufferable lecture delivered after receiving the 2007 O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize, David Wojahn pointed to Wendroth's poetry as "what is wrong with poetry and younger poets." Wojahn pointed, specifically, to "The Home of the Brave" as a failure of a poem. Yeah, this poem kind of stinks on some levels, but Wojahn seemed to not be judging Wendroth on his own terms. He's not a lyric poet, in fact there's a lot of the anti-lyric or refusal of the lyric (& other things) here. Stripping things down to an almost mechanical level to get at, clearly, essential contradictions or tensions. So this is a fine book if you enjoy short, unornamented poems. His best poems exist in an "edgy" (ugh) place somewhere between cosmic riddle and one-liner. There are a lot of throw away poems here, but I suspect that's what happens when you're writing short poems. (But do we really need these two poems side by side or at all?)

In The Fuhrer-Bunker

Decency reigns.
Meals come on time.
A great city, in miniature,
has been laid out,
and is dreamt upon.
This is the city of tomorrow.

At the AWP Hotel Bar

Even so...
some agony aunts do seem
to stagger out.

Let them all be stacked.

Poems I'd like to come back to: "Walt Whitman," "The Octopus," "Where I Stand w/Regard to the Game," "Narrative Poem."

[Erik Wirfs-Brock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the longer poems that often transposed man's dark emotions with nature, but the short, gnomic anti-bush poems wouldn't have been that great in 2007, let alone now.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having learned so much already from Letters to Wendy, I then shamefully let this one languish in my non-dissertation pile for way too long. I am a fan of the brevity in this book, which often feels breathless. And then there's the epithalamion for Kevin and Britney. Now, how could you not love that. And "Advice to the Dissertator," and "Academia." Guess this book knew what it was doing all these months, sitting on my desk.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

This collection contains extremely weak, trite, laughable line sets like

"the men bear down,
and the home of the brave
is what we cannot understand,
what we cannot endure,
so long as we are free."

Throughout collection there is a repetition of weak lines like "dumb with hope," "decay upon decay," "break and rot and never dream" (6 times) each appearing in short poems. Poorly crafted line breaks. Usually a lack of imagery. An utter disappointment. Glad it was free.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems were rad. I don't know much about poetry, but I liked most of them. This review is sort of worthless, but then, if you think about it, so are you. // Read this again 19 Nov 2010. Awesome. Octopus and Privacy were amazing, this whole collection was great.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book of poems. The disunity of styles is refreshing, and human, and creates a greater breadth of expectation. The book is larger than it would be were it to adhere to the straight-jacket of a given style.

[Brian Foley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting a few laughs, but this was much more somber and didactic than i thought it would be. I enjoyed it though and I will check into his back pages.

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 5 out of 5]

so good

[Erin Tuzuner · Rating 4 out of 5]

No Real Light is an apt title for these dark polished gems. Bleak, humourous, and exceedingly sparse - such is life.