I’m the author of two books of poems and a chapbook. My poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, Tar River Poetry, Bellevue Literary Review, Nashville Review, Minnesota Review, Rhino, THRUSH, and elsewhere. Poems of mine have also appeared in several anthologies. My awards include the 2003 Amy Award from Poets and Writers, and an Academy of American Poets prize.

My third book of poems is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press at the University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point, as part of their Portage Poetry Series. The book will be published in the fall of 2024.

Read an interview with me about my work, in Ploughshares.

***

Morph and Bloom (CW Books, 2013)

Morph and Bloom was a finalist for the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry and was published by CW Books in 2013.

Praise for Morph and Bloom:

“Wendy Wisner reminds us that a family, like the earth, has its seasons. She grafts the joys and worries of motherhood to bloom and to decay—a landscape lit at once by ‘bourbon light’ and ‘margarine winter light.’  Familial love and a devotion to the natural world braid into a gaze that alights on astonishing imagery: ‘he sleeps in goddess pose / and smells like hay.’  These  poems are reflective, often searing. These poems blossom again and again into a ‘many-petaled’ splendor.”  —Eduardo C. Corral ”

‘Rescue me now’…someone is being saved, someone is being sought in Wendy Wisner’s Morph and Bloom, though it isn’t always clear who:  the mother, the sister, the grandfather, the infant.  Two generations of  childhoods are layered against one another, as—in all their danger, all their physicality, all their light and dark sublimity—the early years of her mothering are shown to us.  And there is absolutely no way to say it better than Wisner does—those years are spent ‘clinging to the waves of a different sea.’ ”  —Sarah Vap

Review by Grace Cavalieri (Washington Review of Books)

Review by Kara Dorris (Lingerpost)

Review by Katherine Stutzman (Literary Mama)

Review by Tessara Dudley (Mom Egg Review)

***

Epicenter (CW Books, 2004)

Epicenter was a runner up for the CustomWords Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, the Word Works Washington Prize, and the Main Street Rag Book Award. It was published by CW Books in 2004.

Praise for Epicenter:

“Wendy Wisner’s assured first book finds at the core of family both unease and tenderness. Her best poems possess a strange interiority that makes them feel lit from within.” —Mark Doty

“I am thrilled and moved by Wendy Wisner’s Epicenter. I want to invent new words to herald the emergence of this wonderful young poet. She is delicate, but never dainty; she is exquisitely sensitive to the nuances of feeling that constitute our inner life, but never hermetic. These poems, one after the other, take my breath away and give breath back to me. What a great gift this book is.” —Jan Heller Levi

“It’s a compelling, confiding, sometimes awe-struck voice that speaks through these poems. A woman at moments of discovery, surprised at what she has found. These poems are tender and unwavering, erotic in the largest sense of the word — in love with the world, with pennies and record players, tablecloths, and cell-phone chargers. Lyrical, interior, grounded in the beauties and struggles of daily life, family life, Epicenter is a thrilling, heartbreaking first book of poems.” —Donna Masini

***

Another Place of Rocking (Pudding House Press, 2010)

Another Place of Rocking is a sequence of prose poems about growing up on Martha’s Vineyard with hippie-activist parents. It was a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize, the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize, the University of Arkansas Poetry Series, and was a runner up for the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Competition. Another Place of Rocking was published as a chapbook by Pudding House Press in 2010.

Read some sample poems here:

from Verse Daily

***

POEMS

My poems have appeared widely in literary journals, both online and in print. Here are some poems that have appeared on the web:

The 2River View: “I died, and lost flight”
Glass: A Journal of Poetry, “First Love”
Literary Mama: “On His Second Birthday”
Literary Mama: “Weaning: Burial”
Literary Mama: “Weaning: God”
Literary Mama: “Weaning: Hurricane”
The Maynard: “Trust The Trees”
Nashville Review, “Marriage”
No Tell Motel: “Benjamin Sleeping”
No Tell Motel: “Dream of the Mother”
No Tell Motel: “His Dark Mouth”
No Tell Motel: “His First Week”
No Tell Motel: “Newborn Haze”
The Summerset Review, “House”
The Summerset Review, “Skin”
Sweet Lit: “Reading the News”
THRUSH Poetry Journal, “Breadcrumbs”
Valparaiso Poetry Review, “My Father’s Life in the Sun”
Verse Daily: “Ocean” and “Origins”