wendy s. walters | h o m e t o w n

A lot of talk lately about empathy and the ways we have become immune to it suggests that the severe challenges we now face are a product of our own laziness.  I take a photograph from inside my car while I drive by Cherokee’s House on my way to downtown Detroit.  Of course I am on my way to someplace important, and I do not have time to stop the car, get out and look around.  Lately it seems I am moving from one fast moment to the next without resources to complete any of my appointed tasks without engaging in some complicated backstep.  To go forward I must move sideways then backwards then sideways before I can start to move in a right direction.   I am aware a building is not a person and connecting with a place is a ridiculous substitution for people love, but buildings evidence a people’s relationship to the geographies and economies they have inherited.  I mark my driving by with a snapshot.  It will be a stormy afternoon in Southeastern Michigan, and what we do expect is several waves of thunderstorms, perhaps an isolated tornado.

Highland Park, MI

I am honored to be introducing Leslie C. Chang at the reading celebrating the release of her new book, Things that No Longer Delight Me, which was selected by Cornelius Eady for the 2008-9 Poet’s Out Loud Prize.  The reading will take place Tuesday, March 23 at 7:00 pm, 12th Floor Lounge, Fordham University, Lincoln Center, 113 West 60th Street in NYC.

The book is an ambitious and patient engagement with memory and history.  All the relics that evidence no one, all the family photographs mistaken for the past.  It is not a small book.  Do not miss it.

Another new year, another season of change.  Another opportunity to really look at what is before us, not just to recognize that which we already know to be true.  Perhaps we all will have to be more articulate.  Conversational, colloquial America is going to really have to know what it means when it says it is America if it is finally going to achieve itself.

Longer I Wait, More You Love Me
Wendy S. Walters 
Palm Press
$18.00
124 pages 

Available from SPD Books   

About the Book:

The thirteen experiments in narrative structure that comprise LONGER I WAIT, MORE YOU LOVE ME, Wendy S. Walters’ first full-length collection, reflect a special affection for the long-form poem. With deadpan perceptiveness, the subtle dynamics of relationship that can lead to loneliness, romance and even divine love are noted as landscapes of consciousness.  This collection examines how misfortune occurs when we allow those moments, people and locations most familiar to us to pass by without acknowledgement of their resonant mystery.

Providence, RI

This is where I used to live.  It was the loneliest place I have ever known. When I moved away I had hoped to be able to hold on to it,since my life had changed quite a bit for the better since I purchased it.  I hoped I could be happy revisiting the house, maybe even using it as a place to work.  But the house was too heavy to carry financially.  So I put it on the market and was lucky to find a buyer.  I suspect anyone would be happier than I was living in that house.  Sometimes I miss the loneliness, but these days I am easily distracted from longing. These days my home is the place I most want to be.

On the grounds of Helsingor, the castle Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote Hamlet

Still feeling Ophelia more than the dark prince.

Outside Columbus, OH

Without industry, what becomes of the American pastoral?  Do we go back to the farm once the cities are also empty?  How green can industry really be?