Obstructed View by Wendy Vardaman

Fireweed Press, July, 2009

$12,  79pp, Poetry

available from Amazon.com 

Cover art: Melissa Croghan, Red Day

Contact Wendy Vardaman, wvardaman (at) hotmail.com, 

for more information

about Obstructed View

Obstructed View explores the border between free and formal verse in poems that are, on the surface, about women’s lives, and especially motherhood. But it’s really about getting a bad seat at a good show; about seeing tantalizing flashes of amazing performances from the corner of one eye; about trying to twist, fold and bend yourself enough to catch something of the action then paying for it later; about seeing just enough to make you think you know the plot when you’re completely mistaken, or having to fill in the story yourself because, really, you have no idea what’s going on or what the Director intended.

“Wendy Vardaman’s extraordinary collection of poems is a triumph of literary coalescence, gracefully combining the erudite with the everyday, the deeply meditative with the witty, the celebratory with the searingly sad. Calling upon her deep knowl- edge of traditional prosody—and subverting it whenever necessary—the poet also brings to these poems a stylistic polish rarely encountered in this age of open forms. From its thoughtful contemplations on the passage of years to its series of close-ups on the joys and aches of motherhood, Obstructed View speaks to the reader with unobstructed clarity, combining virtuosity / with lyric meditation.”

—Marilyn L, Taylor, Wisconsin Poet Laureate

“Wendy Vardaman is one of the most sincere voices that I chose for my book, Eternal Voices, interviews with strong poets like Adrienne Rich, Sam Hamill, Billy Collins and Joy Harjo. Her common ability with these true poets is her feeling of responsibility for reaching others and especially her true self through poetry. Her poems prove her claim: it is love, not its lack, that compels me to write.”

—Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi (Iranian poet and translator)

“This book may be called Obstructed View, but Wendy Vardaman has a clear view indeed of what it means to be a woman and a writer in 21st century America. Occupying the border between free and formal verse, (there are 15 sonnets, including one called “Unemployed,” an ironic take on motherhood, three sestinas, and several nonce forms) Vardaman tells us about her “rocky romance with God,” “wearing, so it can’t get away from me, my heart on my sleeve,” and we, her readers, are all the wiser for it.”

—Barbara Crooker, author of Radiance and Line Dance 

About the Author

Wendy Vardaman, has a Ph.D. in English from University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Engineering from Cornell University. Co-editor of Verse Wisconsin, her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals, including Poetry Daily, Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes, Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory, Letters to the World, Poet Lore, qarrtsiluni, Mezzo Cammin, Nerve Cowboy, Free Verse, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Women’s Review of Books, Rain Taxi Review, Rattle and Portland Review. The author of Obstructed View (Fireweed Press, 2009), her poetry and interviews have been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. In 2004 she was the runner-up for the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Lorine Niedecker Award. She lives in Madison, WI with husband, Thomas DuBois, has three children, and works for a youth theater company, The Young Shakespeare Players.

Out of the Welter by Art Madson

• Paperback: 82 pages
• Publisher: Fireweed Press; 1st edition (July 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878660233
• ISBN-13: 978-1878660237

In these poems Art Madson shows us the bold, rich welter of his life experiences in terms so honest, so fearless, that the years have caused no loss of color at all. I ‘30s-era “Cops and Robbers,” he is one of a pack of little boys who waits, thrilled and terrified, for the excitingly evil Jon Dillinger to veer toward his peaceful town. He can be wickedly funny: his “Silk Purse,” an ode to hogs, is a hilarious and spot-on examination of the piggy nature. Yet in “Sweet Sixteen” Madson remorselessly examines his callous teenage self, a trapper so greedy he hated a raccoon for chewing its leg off and “swindling me of its skin.”

He shows us, quietly, a stunning tragedy: the day on which his mother died from cancer, and (a few hours later) his father, distractedly driving onto train tracks, his intent never to be known. But many of Madson’s richest poems, the most intense and passionate, deal with his love for his wife “Clemmie.” “Elbows and Onions” takes place in the kitchen, a divine welter of root vegetables and stew and an embrace so blazing, between this long-wed couple, that we see they are indeed “incandescent/ for the other.”

Madson shows us that the past is not past; and that it will never be so.

-Margaret Benbow, author of Stalking Joy

About the Author

Raised on an Iowa farm, Arthur Madson described himself as 'a lapsed agrarian.' Yet his farming childhood lives on in his poems, and his love of gardening stayed with him over the decades. Born in June 1925, Arthur lived until April 2008. At his memorial service his family celebrated him as husband, father, grandfather, big brother, uncle, teacher, storyteller, poet and scholar. His fellow poets saw him as quick-witted, wry, and unmatched in his nuanced portrayal of fellow humans. Humor was a mainstay for him, and he used it artfully, both on the page and at the podium. Arthur enjoyed a long marriage to cellist Marianne McDaniel Madson, the beloved 'Clemmie' in his poems. Over the years, the partners, who had been college sweethearts, encouraged each other's creativity and raised five children together. Arthur served in the army during World War II and afterward earned his PhD at the University of Oklahoma. He began writing in his mid-fifties and joined the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets after reading his poems at the Wisconsin State Capitol on Poetry Day. He served as vice president of WFOP and editor of its annual poets' calendar. He taught English for thirty-six years, most of them at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. A Shakespeare scholar who was also versed in the works of Melville and other literary greats, he delighted students and other audiences with his insightful lectures. He joined a biweekly manuscript group in Madison and began publishing soon afterward. His work appeared in many magazines and four books--Good Manure, Blue-Eyed Boy, Plastering the Cracks and Coming Up Sequined.


Available on Amazon