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back / of the body jaw to ankle still twisted floss. / have you had some extra stress this year? / do a quick inventory. as of this morning / all three kids alive
These poems ache - with the desperate love of a mother, yearning, grief, and the surprise of growing older in the liminal space between elder parents and long-limbed children. Vardaman's use of language is assured and muscular. In one poem, she may warm the reader up with long lines that metamorphize from playful litany to slicing emotional truth, and in another a single diminutive stanza delivers the energy of a bomb.
It's rare for a poet to expose the quotidian of life so utterly that the reader is left breathless, but Vardaman creates deep feeling from ordinary life, transforming it into astonishment.
thread me an exit was a 2024 selection of the Brain Mill Press + Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Chapbook Contest.
About the author
Wendy Vardaman (wendyvardaman.com), PhD, works as a web and digital media specialist. She is the author of Obstructed View (2009), Reliquary of Debt (2015), and the chapbook (with Sarah Sadie), Rules of (dis)engagement, or Dubious perFormances (2016). In addition to poetry, her creative practice includes editing, prose writing, illustration, printmaking, and design. One of two Madison, Wisconsin, poets laureate from 2012 to 2015, she currently volunteers as a graphic designer for poetry projects. She received the 2024 Dick Scuglik Memorial Fellowship and residency for writing about art at Write On, Door County and a 2025 residency at Ragdale.
