Wenderoth/Shelley

“The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry.”

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry,” 1820

“Your employees are beautiful-they do not have authority. Even the manager has no authority-if pushed, he will just call someone, who also has no ultimate authority. It's extremely pleasing to recognize this fact-one feels so fairly situated in the teeming absence of authors. At Wendy's, one writes not from an author, but to an author, a sleeping owner who will never wake.”

-Joe Wenderoth, “Letters to Wendy’s,” July 31, 1996

It’s hard to think of poets as people, who do in fact, share the same base thoughts and urges that someone like myself would have. Its definitely a lot easier to imagine poets as wispy, almost airy, subjects who are exceptional at expressing emotions on a higher (more lyrical) plane. For that reason, a book like “Letters to Wendy’s” not only surprised me with its subject matter, but its manner of presentation. Bold and as candid as a direct doorway into his mind can get, “Letters to Wendy’s” is an excellent example of how poetry covers familiar ground so dynamically, readers can’t help but do a double take (or two.)

Whether change was his goal or not, Wenderoth made excellent use of Wendy’s (although it could just as easily have been any similar themed institution) to express opinions that may or may not only apply to him. Written in a style that may not necessarily be considered “traditional poetry” his form of expression does fit Percy Shelley’s understanding of what poetry is and should do.

One need only read a few pages of “Letters to Wendy’s” to find a statement that fits the criteria of being “the expression of the (his) imagination.” His language can be rough at times, but when you also take into consideration that Wenderoth (like many other poets) use a language that “…is vitally metaphorical…” it becomes easier to reinterpret the meaning of some of his statements. Finally, in entries like that of August 2^nd, 1996, where Wenderoth doesn’t anchor his thoughts to Wendy’s at all, it becomes ever more clear that his writings and observations are meant to highlight and express those feelings that the subjects of his discussion may not be able to (or conscious enough to) explain by themselves. Such is the talent of Percy’s poet or “…hierophants of unapprehended inspiration; mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present…”

While a surprising departure from the type of poetry I am used to reading, Wenderoth (by occasionally sticking to the baser urges of man) has given voice to something that may not have been spoken for otherwise. In doing so, according to the opinion of Shelley, “Letters to Wendy’s” has fulfilled the same need that created poetry.