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Epicenter
The dark narrative sketched out in these graceful lyric poems immerses yet distances the consciousness, like an impressionistic painting, slightly blurred at the level of detail but made ever richer at the level of feeling, of emotion. Wendy Wisner’s EPICENTER is a remarkably composed (in many senses of that word) first collection of poems and establishes her as a poet to follow.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 2004
2 people want to read
About the author
Wendy Wisner
6 books9 followersWendy Wisner is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life, published by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point) and named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. Wendy’s poems, essays, and book reviews have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, THRUSH, Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere. Wendy is currently an Associate Editor at Rise Up Review.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 18, 2007
In lesser hands, the obsessive focus of Wendy Wisner's “Epicenter,” would make the whole book fall over, unable to carry the weight of its concern. Most of these spare, direct, powerful poems examine one fundamental relationship, which, in its force, spills over into related and burgeoning ones, as the book goes on.
But Wendy Wisner is too canny and able a poet to merely plough one furrow for seventy pages; using language optically, she pores over facets, examining, probing, always trying to penetrate to the heart of moments, large and small. Turning things over with her language, trying to comprehend, to explain, to herself, the poet, as much as to the reader. It is a mutually rewarding journey, one a reader ndertakes first with some trepidation--the emotional stakes are high--and eventually with wonder, as Wendy navigates the thickets of powerful emotions with language designed to penetrate beyond mere platitudes.
And there is a palpable sense of desire that develops throughout; an unnamed and probably unnamable wanting, that finds its expression in language that moves toward concrete meaning, toward discovery, toward something like home; then…wonders if it has gone too far, burned before as it has been. The first person mentioned in the book is John Lennon; but the feeling I got, being a music guy, was of records like Joni Mitchell's “Blue.” That beautiful, wounded romantic longing, not for one person, a lover, a friend, but for true feeling itself to come up, and stay.
But Wendy Wisner is too canny and able a poet to merely plough one furrow for seventy pages; using language optically, she pores over facets, examining, probing, always trying to penetrate to the heart of moments, large and small. Turning things over with her language, trying to comprehend, to explain, to herself, the poet, as much as to the reader. It is a mutually rewarding journey, one a reader ndertakes first with some trepidation--the emotional stakes are high--and eventually with wonder, as Wendy navigates the thickets of powerful emotions with language designed to penetrate beyond mere platitudes.
And there is a palpable sense of desire that develops throughout; an unnamed and probably unnamable wanting, that finds its expression in language that moves toward concrete meaning, toward discovery, toward something like home; then…wonders if it has gone too far, burned before as it has been. The first person mentioned in the book is John Lennon; but the feeling I got, being a music guy, was of records like Joni Mitchell's “Blue.” That beautiful, wounded romantic longing, not for one person, a lover, a friend, but for true feeling itself to come up, and stay.
Displaying 1 of 1 review