Joe Wenderoth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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]
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.
Career
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]
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]
