Disfortune: Poems

Disfortune is not in the mainstream of American poetic speech, nor is it easily placed into any of the well-known poetic speech-camps that have arisen on its margins. Terse, haunting lyrics expose the irreducible contradictions of living, wherein the talking-singing, the whole talking-/singing ball of yarn, begins to unravel. Deceptively casual in tone, these poems offer startling confrontations with the unoriginal/oblivion, with the contrived delicacy/of what is emptied and kept. Joe Wenderoth sees fortune as the mute history of events proceeding toward the ultimate security; his poems arise from disfortune, from the need Just to sing the song that’s kept you/quiet/all this time. This book is a rare occurrence, marking not only a new intimacy with the world, but also a remembering of the determined motion of intimacy itself.