Wendy Xu

Crowdsource Request:

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:42:07 -0400

I’m writing something on Rosmarie Waldrop, can you help? Can you link me to essays/writings on her poetics, with BONUS if specifically on CURVES TO THE APPLE? Need not be “full-on scholarly,” semi-scholarly preferred.

In short: what are some essays on Waldrop that helped you learn something?

smallpressdistribution: Congratulations to Samuel Amadon,...

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:15:30 -0400

smallpressdistribution:

Congratulations to Samuel Amadon, winner of the Believer Poetry Award for his collection The Hartford Book from Cleveland State University Poetry Center.

Gulf Coast 25.1 Featuring: Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Mary Biddinger, Eula Biss, Amy Boesky, Laynie Browne, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Kent Dorn, Norman Dubie, Thomas Hesie, Drew Johnson, Joshua Kryah, Low Kwa Mei-En, Dr. Lakra, Sarah Manguso, Clancy Martin

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:45:51 -0400

Gulf Coast 25.1 Featuring: Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Mary Biddinger, Eula Biss, Amy Boesky, Laynie Browne, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Kent Dorn, Norman Dubie, Thomas Hesie, Drew Johnson, Joshua Kryah, Low Kwa Mei-En, Dr. Lakra, Sarah Manguso, Clancy Martin :

Gulf Coast is a Journal of Literature and Fine Arts published by the University of Houston in Houston, Texas.

Happy to be in this really good great new GULF COAST w/ people like Joshua Young, Eula Biss, Traci Brimhall, Ada Limon, Danniel Schoonebeek + many others

I WANT TO MAIL YOU THINGS

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:44:00 -0400

Ever since I posted about mailing special things to people who purchase my book this month from SPD, so many of you have! Thank you!

I want to send you your things but I don’t have yr addresses! So, if you purchased YOU ARE NOT DEAD this month, and would like a surprise-poetry-thing from me, please email extrahumanarchitecture@gmail.com with your mailing address!

Then I will make you something special and send it.

Then I will feel even happier than I already do.

There are still 10 days left in April and 19 copies of YOU ARE NOT DEAD left at SPD if you’d like one!

A NEW THING

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:59:53 -0400

is that for the rest of this month, poetry month after all, if you order a copy of YOU ARE NOT DEAD from Small Press Distribution, I will send you something in the mail. It will be something you like, hopefully. They will all be different things but may relate (and are not limited) to:

poetry
the weather
book arts
strategies for combating loneliness
other people
historical photographs
human connection
colors

When you order a copy, send me an email to extrahumanarchitecture@gmail.com with your address. Or hit forward on the convenient receipt SPD will send you, because then you have to type less.

If we know each other I will be delighted to send you the thing I will send. If we don’t, I will be even happier.

It will be a surprise what I send to both you and to me. The surprise will be our very own special shared thing.

"Everyone’s worried about the apocalypse, but not everyone has a sweet, best friend who insists the..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:27:00 -0400

“Everyone’s worried about the apocalypse, but not everyone has a sweet, best friend who insists the apocalypse is nothing to worry about. In Wendy Xu’s debut collection, You Are Not Dead, there are a plenty of everyday things to fear—moving to a new city only to forget old friends, dying in a house fire, the “actual untelevised apocalypse”—but “nothing is actually wrong with us ever,” the speaker insists, though she takes “a quiet kind / of panic to the river” (10, 60, 7). You will be charmed by this witty, non-committal prophet who keeps on noticing, with an unusual gratitude, that meaning is not dead: “I know my hands fold / on their own. I know falling / to my knees still means something. / That a basin of cool water still answers the moon” (15). Creatures keep on living, too, and they’re wondrous—those friends who talk about craving waffles, that majestic African Prairie Buck, the tree she’s planted “knowing / it’s fine without me” (18, 8, 25). You Are Not Dead tells us it’s okay to surrender our need for control, proposing that “one way to be amazed is to be / less amazing and then pay / attention” (18). Wendy Xu writes a realistic hope and humility into our every little anxious thought, illuminating the natural grace that still exists among us. What an overlooked, exceptional truth: we will one day die, but we are not dead yet.”

- from Analicia Sotelo’s review of my first book, YOU ARE NOT DEAD, up today at LitBridge. Thank you Analicia, thank you LitBridge!

The book is available now from Small Press Distribution!

Photo

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:08:19 -0400

"To knock over the first domino in a domino trail is to experience a prolonged ending, but to knock..."

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:52:28 -0400

“To knock over the first domino in a domino trail is to experience a prolonged ending, but to knock over one domino at a time, to have your own finger so involved in a falling, is to stretch an anticipation out to forever, and that is exactly what this book does; the poems turn on a whim (or, more likely, a whimsy) and with each turn, you must reach out and restart the domino, the trail that isn’t actually a trail, but really a series of lilly pads that you must hop across, never knowing if the next one will give, and that maybe you will fall into all that mucky muck and be forced to recall that you are no cartoon after all.”

- B.J. Love’s one-sentence book reviews are always one sentence. One Sentence Book Review #9 is of I WAS NOT EVEN BORN, my collap chap with Nick Sturm, available here from Coconut Books. Thanks, B.J. Love.

isaidokwow: thedolphinarium: I have a poem in the new issue...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:50:36 -0400

isaidokwow:

thedolphinarium:

I have a poem in the new issue of NOO. This issue is a lot of goodness. Just go ahead and look at the contributor list if you don’t believe (you should).

Read this issue, this Mike Krutel poem, this Wendy Xu poem, this Anne Boyer poem, this Chris Toll (RIP) poem, this Emily Toder poem, this Tony Mancus poem, this Rachel Katz poem, this Lisa Ciccarello poem, this submit some poems to the next issue http://www.noojournal.com/submissions.htm

NEW NOO, WELCOME BACK NOO, there is a poem in here from YOU ARE NOT DEAD, maybe my favorite from the book.

I WAS NOT EVEN BORN (a collab chap with Nick Sturm) is now available to order from Coconut Books

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 02:20:00 -0400

I WAS NOT EVEN BORN (a collab chap with Nick Sturm) is now available to order from Coconut Books

On the first day of poetry month

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:03:00 -0400

Happy to be here this first day of April at DIGITAL ROOTS READING SERIES, an online place for videos of poets reading poems:

I read “Never Again the Same” by James Tate, a very important poem to me and to others, plus the first poem from YOU ARE NOT DEAD, just out from Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Thank you Jason Bradford for this new project. Count with me how many times I say “Umm” because poetry makes me nervous.

This is a first for me—I’ve been going to Amherst...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 01:37:25 -0400

This is a first for me—I’ve been going to Amherst Books at least once a week for the last 2 years, living in western massachusetts. Today I walked in and saw my first book You Are Not Dead there, and had an indescribably special feeling. I had never seen my book on a shelf at a bookstore. Backing up even further: I had never had a book to be seen on a shelf at a bookstore.

Thank you Amherst Books, for being a special place for poetry, for making me feel this special happy way today.

"The best inscription I got at AWP this year included touches of the sincere, the complimentary, and..."

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 01:36:45 -0400

“The best inscription I got at AWP this year included touches of the sincere, the complimentary, and the ironic. Wendy Xu’s book, You Are Not Dead, was just published by Cleveland State University Press, and I happened to be there when she was signing books. “I hope you like these poems!” she has written first: humbleness, classy sincerity. And then, for the unexpected twist: “Your cardigan is changing my life.””

- Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers on “Writers’ Inscriptions: The Wise, The Vague, The Ironic” post-AWP, for The Kenyon Review Blog

I feel happy that book inscriptions are also special to other people like they have always felt special to me.

from HANDWRITTEN, by Marjorie Welish, 1979

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:10:24 -0400

from HANDWRITTEN, by Marjorie Welish, 1979

I am still tired from AWP but here are some photos that document...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:08:30 -0400

I am still tired from AWP but here are some photos that document various activities for which I was very awake!

YOU ARE NOT DEAD is now in-stock at Small Press Distribution

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:36:04 -0400

YOU ARE NOT DEAD is now in-stock at Small Press Distribution

Alphabet

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:30:27 -0400

I want you to know that if you’re one of these people who already read or rated or reviewed YOU ARE NOT DEAD at Goodreads, I really really really appreciate you.

R is the letter of the day.

I think I am thinking a lot about letters because I’m living in Alphabet City for spring break, and so have been saying the word “alphabet” more frequently than any other time in my life.

And each time I say it I see one of these cursive handwriting charts from elementary school. This one is especially funny because it is like it thinks you also need guidance regarding hand placement:

INSIDE UNDIVIDED (18) by Dara Wier

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:18:53 -0400

“Theoretically the person who’s reading a book or pages in a journal or this, is invisible to the one who’s responsible for the book or pages, the words. Theoretically the meeting between reader and what’s read is anonymous, invisible, unquantifiable, (e.g.

when where why how
how long
what speed
what intention
what circumstances
where does it matter
how so
what for

reading alone, one never seems alone when one is reading”

This good good series by Dara Wier keeps me interested and asking questions and in parts, it comes to us now #18

I have always wanted

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:36:44 -0400

to be the kind of person who could sleep in public.

monday w/ rare collared shirt

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 11:54:01 -0500

monday w/ rare collared shirt