The Wendys
Book - 2020 811.6 Wh 1 On Shelf No requests on this item
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Locations
Call Number: 811.6 Wh
On Shelf At: Downtown Library
Location & Checkout Length | Call Number | Checkout Length | Item Status |
---|---|---|---|
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout |
811.6 Wh | 4-week checkout | On Shelf |
"A powerful meditation on grief and the radiating effects of violence against women. "Because it is easier to miss a stranger / with your mother's name," Allison Benis White instead writes about five women named Wendy as a way into the complex grief that still lingers after the death of a sixth Wendy, the author's long-absent mother. A series of epistolary poems addressed to Wendy O. Williams becomes an occasion for the speaker to eulogize as well as reflect on the singer's life and eventual suicide: "What kind of love is death, I'm asking?" In the section devoted to Wendy Torrance, the fictional wife from The Shining who was bludgeoned to death by her husband, the speaker muses on the inadequacy of language to resolve or even contain grief in the wake of trauma: "A book is a coffin. Hoarsely. A white sheet draped over the cage of screaming." Ultimately, The Wendys is a book of silences and space in which tenderness and violence exist in exquisite tension. "If to speak is to die," Benis White writes in "Ignis Fatuus," "I will whisper.""-- Provided by publisher.
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PUBLISHED
New York : Four Way Books, [2020]
Year Published: 2020
Description: 65 pages ; 22 cm
Language: English
Format: Book
ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9781945588426
194558842X
SUBJECTS
Williams, Wendy Orlean, -- 1948-1998 -- Poetry.
Mothers -- Poetry.
Women -- Violence against -- Poetry.
Death -- Poetry.
Grief -- Poetry.
Psychic trauma -- Poetry.