If I Don't Breathe How Do I Sleep
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"Best-known for his gritty and uproarious prose poetry collection Letters to Wendy's, Wenderoth began his career with two books of gimlet-eyed, world-weary, hard-hitting poetry. Now he returns to verse, favoring (as before) relatively short poems, often twelve lines or fewer, most of which crackle with a bleakness that's part gallows humor, part outrage, and part despair." Publishers Weekly, starred review of No Real Light
"A perverse, sometimes pretty, obscene, and confounding collection of one page meditative missives . . . trimmed with lunatic fringe." Rolling Stone review of Letters to Wendy's
Whether it's addressing the grotesque in daily scenes or upsetting the norms of professional culture, Joe Wenderoth's fifth collection resonates with his signature intellect and disturbing humor. He is at once an aesthete and an iconoclast who brings inventive force to American poetry.
Early Capitalism
they are perfecting the pillow
with which
you are being suffocated
now it sings to you
and shows you pictures
Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of No Real Light, The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft's Secret Self, and Letters to Wendy's. Wesleyan University Press published his first two books of poems: Disfortune and It Is If I Speak. He is a professor of English at the University of California, Davis.
