Joe Wenderoth

Joe Wenderoth is an American writer, performer, teacher, and film-maker. He has published seven books: five books of poetry, an epistolary novel, and a book of essays. His work is widely  anthologized, and has been published in collections and periodicals such as Harpers, The Nation, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, Best American Poetry 2007, Best American Essays 2008, Poetry 180, The Next American Essay, The Best American Poems: From Poe to Present, The Body Electric, The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology, and American Poetry: Next Generation. ^[1] He and his work has a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2011.^[2]

University of California Davis

He was an assistant professor within the English Department at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota,^[3][4]  and is currently a Professor of English at University of California at Davis, where he teaches in the creative writing graduate program.^[5]

His hobbies and other interests include country & punk music, television, billiards, basketball, and  baseball [8] Additionally, he is also a member of the Associated Writing Program.^[6] His films and artwork can be found on YouTube along with some readings of his work. Other audio recordings of poems, public readings, and his podcast, About Brett Favre can be found at Internet Archive.

Background and early life

Admissions Department Building at Loyola College in Maryland.

Joe Wenderoth was born on June 29, 1966, in Baltimore, MD to his father Joe, Sr. and mother Kathryn Wenderoth. His father was a systems analyst and his mother was a nurse.^[7] He attended Loyola College, in Baltimore, MD, to obtain his Bachelor's degree in 1988. At New York University, he participated in a graduate study before deciding to earn his M.F.A. at Warren Wilson College in 1993.^[7]

Career

He worked as an instructor in Creative Writing at New York University from 1990–91; an instructor in English at Harford Community College, Bel Air, MD, in 1993; an instructor in English at Catonsville Community College, from 1993–94; an instructor in English at Baltimore International Culinary College, Baltimore, MD, in 1995; Instructor at Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, from 1994-1995; and currently teaches in the creative writing graduate program at University of California at Davis. He also worked as a van driver and delivery person.^[7]

Themes and style

Bomb magazine characterizes his work as "uncomfortable honesty”, describing his poems as “bleak but always full-bodied in the experiences they channel.” ^[8] Wenderoth's poetry aligns with themes of absurdity, vulgarity, and satire.  His work has been called gritty, irreverent and witty by Publishers Weekly, often aided by his use of prose. He often utilizes these themes to discuss heavy topics of societal issues, faults within capitalist America and bureaucracy, and mental illness.^[8]

Wenderoth's work has also been defined as seriocomic, which the Oxford dictionary defines “as combining the serious and the comic; serious in intention but jocular in manner, or vice versa.” ^[1]  He also consistently employs the theme of gallows humor throughout his work as he consistently utilizes humor in order to make fun of grim, disastrous, and terrifying situation.^[9] His work within the Inscription of the Seizure State is also credited at GIGANTIC magazine for “creating a new culture-agon that aims to unmire itself of poetry and convey how the poetic manifests itself in the SEIZURE of ourselves.” ^[10] He often comments on the human experience, utilizing compressed vignettes about seemingly minor or preposterous issues that reveal desperate humanity. The Boston Review comments on his writing style, that it champions ridiculous possibilities of change that deride the United States culpabilities and hypocrisies ^[11] In a review of Wenderoth’s poetry, poet Calvin Bedient commented that it "makes quick cuts in the meat of the ordinary, which is the meat of the impossible." ^[12]

Bibliography

In addition to his written works, Wenderoth curates "The Seizure State” (sometimes referred to as Inscription of the Seizure State) as editor for the Brooklyn-based magazine GIGANTIC, and produces the podcast About Brett Favre, which is associated with The Seizure State. The podcast is accessible via Internet Archive and is described via its description as “concerning things indescribable. Brett Favre is one such thing. Buck Hunter is another. Really the indescribable things are all around. Yes and no at the same time. All contradictions existing at the same time. Disaster.  Sympathy.” ^[13] Wenderoth commented on the podcast when asked about it by BOMB magazine and replied “I have all this good stuff on audio (referring to his recordings of environs) and it seems like doing a podcast (on the low-fi) is something like making a mix tape. I thought: What would it be like if a podcast was not afraid to take that next step? What would it be like if a podcast dared to show everything? Brett Favre is the central figure in the post-mortem age, and our society’s refusal to come to grips with this fact is no doubt the fault of the sort of people who refuse to even listen. Isn’t it about time someone took action?” ^[8]

Articles

PloughShares, Spring 2001 Edition-Poet of The Accomplishment and At the Races ^[13]

Novels

Letters to Wendy’s (Verse Press, 2000): This work is an epistolary novel written over the course of a year on fast food comment cards at the fast food chain, Wendy’s. Though a “novel”, the work doesn’t follow a cohesive story, rather, through the use the comment cards, it shows the “outrageous” and “tragic” life and thoughts of the unnamed protagonist.^[5] Wenderoth himself didn’t consider it a novel, but believed that for business purposes, it was best to call it one, stating in an interview that, “People like to read novels. If I call it a novel, people can read it and dwell in the happy expectation of character and plot and all of that. Honestly, though, I'd like to make up a genre: tragic-comic impressions. And I mean "impression" in all its senses, particularly the one, you know, meaning ‘imitation of someone else—imitation of a someone’”.^[12]  Wenderoth's absurdist and philosophical views in the novel, comments on and critique American consumer culture through a comical lens, scrutinizing a world of frosties, burgers, french fries, and soft drinks, the staples of the American fast food diet.^[14] BOMB magazine writes that the novel “eludes the gimmickry of project-minded works through its absurdity-embracing lens and raw handling of feeling”.^[8] In 2003, the One Yellow Rabbit theater company performed an adaptation of Wenderoth's Letters To Wendy's. The adaptation was done by Bruce McCulloch (of The Kids in the Hall) and Blake Brooker, both of whom also starred in the production.

In 2007, Wenderoth performed in collaboration with Gibby Haynes (of the Butthole Surfers) in Brooklyn at the Issue Project Room.

Poetry

If I Don’t Breathe How Do I Sleep (Wave Books, 2014): As Wenderoth's fourth poetry collection, If I Don’t Breathe How Do I Sleep, alternates between dark comedy, fractured surrealism, and caustic satire, as Publishers Weekly describes, it is “both a self-conscious indictment and a perverse celebration of the capability of language itself.”.^[15] The work also critiques, via absurdism, the social faults of capitalism and America. The speaker is in a perpetual state of conflict with discovering their own limitations, including the desire to travel, to offer sympathy, to miss a loved one, to avoid bureaucratic obligations, to assemble a clown, and to stay in shape. As each poem progresses, the speaker discovers more despair and more limitations within their life, causing each poem to go further away from a perceived, cathartic end.^[8]

No Real Light (Wave Books, 2007): According to its publisher, Wave Books, Wenderoth's fourth collection of poetry portrays themes of searching and solemnity, dissatisfied with artificial condolences and pat maxims, and Wenderoth’s portrayal of determination in the face of harsh realities rescuing the audience and himself from hopelessness.^[5] Wenderoth offers readers a collection of primarily short verse poetry, with occasional longer works, often 12 lines or fewer that combine his penchant for humor with an overriding feeling of both outrage and despair.^[16] The poetry reveals themes of “gallows humor”, outrage, despair, and the vulnerability behind cynicism.^[15]

It Is If I Speak (Wesleyan University Press, 2000): This collection of poetry is considered sparse, nihilistic and sometimes witty by its publisher, Wesleyan University Press.^[3] Publishers Weekly wrote that Wenderoth had a passion for philosophical ideas and also no ideas but in things.The result is poetry that is intellectually charged but whose final fidelity is to the senses.^[15] Tim Gavin of the Library Journal noted that Wenderoth's poetry "is sparse in form and content" as it explores the central topic "through a nihilistic lens."^[16]

The Endearment (Short Line Editions, 1999): A chapbook collection of poetry by Wenderoth, exploring multiple aspects including dogs, religion, doctors, and hospitals.

Disfortune (Wesleyan University Press, 1995): As Wenderoth's debut collection, this collection of poems is considered not in the mainstream of American poetic speech, nor easily placable into any of the well-known poetic speech-camps that have arisen on its margins. It is considered by its publisher, Wesleyan University Press, as terse with its haunting lyrics exposing the irreducible contradictions of living. The poems are “Deceptively casual” in tone, offering confrontation with themes within his poems. Wenderoth sees fortune as the “mute history of events proceeding toward the ultimate security” ^[3]

Essays

The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft’s Secret Self: In these essays, Wenderoth explores the moving fluidly between aesthetics, obscenity, American culture, and the craft of poetry.^[5] The individual essays explore the semiotics of Mayberry RFD and the phenomenology of Wile E. Coyote, reinterpret a poem of Sappho's to describe a seizure, rewrite a poem by Robert Hass so that it describes junkies in Cleveland, invents new drinking games, and advises academic colleagues.^[15] Wenderoth imbues the essays with concerned philosophical purpose, rhetorical choices, serio-comic tones and drama that leads the reader to believe in their own deeper significance.^[11] The book also includes 24 photographs of Wenderoth at various stages in his life.

Work in progress

Wenderoth is currently at work on Agony: a proposal.^[5]