Press
Rockland County Business Journal: STAC'S TEACHER/POET MONICA WENDEL
"Here’s a prose poem by Monica that I think also qualifies as environmental literature. I love how it mixes dream state with memory, and I love how the waterways around New York City are almost another character in it. Every sentence is another surprise, but somehow the piece also makes me think of the closing lines of The Great Gatsby!"
Orlando Weekly BEST FLORIDA INSIGHT BY AN OUTSIDER:
"When Brooklyn poet Monica Wendel became the Kerouac House’s latest writer in residence in March, she didn’t waste time discovering our neck of the woods. Besides stealing the show from literary lights Philip Deaver and John King during May’s Functionally Literate reading at the Timucua Arts White House, Wendel also took road trips to tourist destinations like Kennedy Space Center and Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. Her poetry picked up some Sunshine State stank along the way, illuminating Florida’s inescapable twinges of fear and hopelessness. In 'Brain Science,' a new poem written during her stay, Wendel concludes a thought with 'even as much as Florida feels like hell, or caves under its own weight into sinkholes that reach the slow-moving aquifer,' suggesting that three months here might just be long enough."
Ploughshares Review: ENGLISH KILLS
“The logic that holds English Kills together is uniquely its own, but the Ovid of Metamorphoses would have recognized it.”
Kenyon Review: ENGLISH KILLS
“Wendel is best when, as in the title poem English Kills, she makes curious claims about language: ‘I’ve been singing in a dead language / about the sun,’ and ‘language is a river, not a fish tank.’ It is language that allows all the travel, escape, immersion, and, especially, the entrance and exit to the dreamworld we are asked to visit in English Kills.”
Cleaver Magazine Review: NO APOCALYPSE
“In rejecting the pastoral rivers of classical poetry, Wendel contradicts her neat subdivisions, and this – unlike, perhaps, zombie apocalypse movies or end-of-days premonitions – holds one’s attention.”
Weave Magazine Review: CALL IT A WINDOW
“With these various and illuminating views, the poems echo the title of the collection. One by one, the tiny windows of these poems become mirrors into which readers do not merely look, but become a part.”
PODCASTS:
"A Shape That Has No Name.” Featured author, Reckoning Press Podcast.
“The American Girl Literary Legacy.” Interview with Laura Tretter and Lindsey Adams Frank, American Girl Woman.
“Monica Wendel on Poetry.” Interview with Gaby Garcia, On Poetry Podcast.
INTERVIEWS:
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal
Penmen Review
Gandy Dancer
Vidaweb
Brooklyn Poets
Spoon River Poetry Review (Roundtable)
OTHER
St. Thomas Aquinas College Press Release
St. Thomas Aquinas College Press Release
St. Thomas Aquinas College Faculty Profile
Destination Journal
"Here’s a prose poem by Monica that I think also qualifies as environmental literature. I love how it mixes dream state with memory, and I love how the waterways around New York City are almost another character in it. Every sentence is another surprise, but somehow the piece also makes me think of the closing lines of The Great Gatsby!"
Orlando Weekly BEST FLORIDA INSIGHT BY AN OUTSIDER:
"When Brooklyn poet Monica Wendel became the Kerouac House’s latest writer in residence in March, she didn’t waste time discovering our neck of the woods. Besides stealing the show from literary lights Philip Deaver and John King during May’s Functionally Literate reading at the Timucua Arts White House, Wendel also took road trips to tourist destinations like Kennedy Space Center and Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. Her poetry picked up some Sunshine State stank along the way, illuminating Florida’s inescapable twinges of fear and hopelessness. In 'Brain Science,' a new poem written during her stay, Wendel concludes a thought with 'even as much as Florida feels like hell, or caves under its own weight into sinkholes that reach the slow-moving aquifer,' suggesting that three months here might just be long enough."
Ploughshares Review: ENGLISH KILLS
“The logic that holds English Kills together is uniquely its own, but the Ovid of Metamorphoses would have recognized it.”
Kenyon Review: ENGLISH KILLS
“Wendel is best when, as in the title poem English Kills, she makes curious claims about language: ‘I’ve been singing in a dead language / about the sun,’ and ‘language is a river, not a fish tank.’ It is language that allows all the travel, escape, immersion, and, especially, the entrance and exit to the dreamworld we are asked to visit in English Kills.”
Cleaver Magazine Review: NO APOCALYPSE
“In rejecting the pastoral rivers of classical poetry, Wendel contradicts her neat subdivisions, and this – unlike, perhaps, zombie apocalypse movies or end-of-days premonitions – holds one’s attention.”
Weave Magazine Review: CALL IT A WINDOW
“With these various and illuminating views, the poems echo the title of the collection. One by one, the tiny windows of these poems become mirrors into which readers do not merely look, but become a part.”
PODCASTS:
"A Shape That Has No Name.” Featured author, Reckoning Press Podcast.
“The American Girl Literary Legacy.” Interview with Laura Tretter and Lindsey Adams Frank, American Girl Woman.
“Monica Wendel on Poetry.” Interview with Gaby Garcia, On Poetry Podcast.
INTERVIEWS:
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal
Penmen Review
Gandy Dancer
Vidaweb
Brooklyn Poets
Spoon River Poetry Review (Roundtable)
OTHER
St. Thomas Aquinas College Press Release
St. Thomas Aquinas College Press Release
St. Thomas Aquinas College Faculty Profile
Destination Journal
