Longer I Wait, More You Love Me [Paperback]

Wendy Walters (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 24, 2009

In the thirteen experiments in narrative structure that comprise LONGER I WAIT, MORE YOU LOVE ME, Wendy S. Walters first full-length collection, special attention is given to the long-form poem. The subtle dynamics of relationship that can lead to loneliness, romance and even divine love are noted with deadpan perceptiveness. 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Wendy S. Walters is not poetic, she is cinematic. Her toolbox contains all of the possibilities of widescreen behavior, and each page of this book knows it. Everything we learned as poets, she has unlearned. If you read her across the page, horizontally, she appears to be a narrative poet with a linear line in love with story but if you read her down the page, vertically, she appears to be a philosophical painter with an insistent line in love with layering. Verité not mere studio mise en scene, Walters is also a master of erasure no easy similes or tie-up-the-end-the-poem metaphors. Her aspect ratio is wholeness, the gathering of artifice, allegory and constant, intellectual creativity. Longer I Wait, More You Love Me is a bit of a tease too. It hears our request and knows we want song. --Thomas Sayers Ellis

Longer I Wait, More You Love Me is a dream-radio in which Wendy Walters tunes a wonderment of voices. It is beautifully kaleidoscopic. Mixing loneliness and longing, juxtaposing eroticism, humor and violence, this collection is fable-esque, journalistic, rapturous, and dead-pan acknowledging that 'It can be hard to get a message through when / people are underwater' without betraying the complex narratives of our lives. These poems accrete with a heart-rending attentiveness to the actual: stories of family, lovers, politics and race are sharpened and backdropped by the speaker s avowal that 'Inside me / are many people / I don t know // who they speak for / They talk / all the time.' Longer I Wait, More You Love Me swells with the cut-up songs of unhearing and the vicissitudes of intimacy, marking the arrival of a much-needed new voice in contemporary poetry and inviting 'the rotten joyful / to take one on the chin.' --Alex Lemon

About the Author

Wendy S. Walters was raised in a suburb of Detroit, MI and is Assistant Professor of Poetry in the Department of Literary Studies at the Eugene Lang College of The New School University. Her poems and essays have also appeared in Callaloo, Seneca Review, HOW2, Natural Bridge, Sou'wester, Seattle Review and Harper's Magazine. She lives in New York, NY.

Product Details

• Paperback: 124 pages
• Publisher: Palm Press; First edition (October 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0978926226
• ISBN-13: 978-0978926229
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,789,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars single-malt poetry, October 28, 2010

By 

foibles - See all my reviews

This review is from: Longer I Wait, More You Love Me (Paperback)

First, I'll say that I'm not normally a voracious consumer of poetry but this slim volume packs a velvet wallop, like a shot of well-made scotch (which may just be one of the poet's muses since it it referenced in 'Story of My Life'). Wendy Walters' poems are stark-naked confessions and dreamy surrealist paintings in equal measure.

The landscapes and tropes may be recognizable but sudden shocks and chaotic jolts remind us that reality bends and ultimately breaks jaggedly, just like the human heart. Family, friends, and strangers drift across these pages bearing unsolicited wisdom that often twists itself into cruelty and delusion. Babies are found in laundromats, human heads are used as bongs, and trees are ripe with shoes.

Oh yeah, and there's sex in here too...in cars and the faculty lounge and lurking just below the surface boredom. Sometimes bartered (for T-bone steaks), sometimes offered up spontaneously ("I moved my pelvis as if scooping ice cream") men and women awkwardly grasp at few fleeting moments of desire. There are tongues left in people's trousers (literally) and relationships that get shoved into lobster traps and lowered into the sea. Walters somehow sandwiches all the beautiful, brutal three-card monte of love in lines that deliver both jaw-dropping surprise and aching familiarity.

In these poems are also revelatory meditations on library fines, wounded cowgirls, buried dogs, pedagogy, doppelganger comedians, strong English tea, and yes, good whiskey.
"Whiskey, whiskey, never enough whiskey...."

That's how I felt when I put this book down...desperate for just one more poem before closing time.

5.0 out of 5 stars Personal Stories with Depth, December 12, 2010

By 

Monty - See all my reviews

This review is from: Longer I Wait, More You Love Me (Paperback)

Wendy Walters is one of the most underrated poets I've ever read. This book is filled with dense poetry that let's you into the world of a very sophisticated writer. Her emotional imagery makes you let out one of those understanding "mmh's". I can't recommend this book enough for a reader of poetry (or not) wanting a good nightstand book. Check out her other work, too. Birds of Los Angeles is a great read as well.