Fruit of the Earth
Buy it from Main Street Rag Publishing Company
Fruit of the Earth won First Place for the National Federation of Press Women 2019 Award for a Poetry Book.
Praise for Fruit of the Earth:
Jamie Wendt considers place and displacement from both a personal and cultural viewpoint. Indeed, it can be challenging to observe with an outsider’s acute eye when one has the thoughtful heart of an insider. But it’s just this ability that makes these poems of tradition, ritual, family and selfhood exceptional. Her descriptions delight, but I’m most impressed with her ability to distill images into statements that enlighten and so beautifully express the complexities of longing. –Teri Youmans Grimm, author of Dirt Eaters (University Press of Florida) and Becoming Lyla Dore (Red Hen Press)
In Fruit of the Earth, Jamie Wendt brings us to “each side of the invisible border” between the Old Country and the Promised Land. She receives both the jewels and atrocities of her rich Jewish heritage and tries to change the direction of the future while praying in the Women’s Section at The Wall and helping deprived Sudanese refugee children in Tel-Aviv. These are exquisite poems of lament and of praise, “the laughter loud despite everything.” –Dina Elenbogen, author of the memoir Drawn from Water (BKMKPress, University of Missouri) and the poetry collection Apples of the Earth (Spuyten Duyvil, NY)
I love Jamie Wendt’s remarkable debut collection Fruit of the Earth. Her book is magnificent, lyric, intelligent: It is an ode and praise and elegy to the things of this world and the heart of the spiritual world. Her work is masterful, subtle yet complex, full of love and life. Read this book now! –Elizabeth A. I. Powell, author of the poetry collections The Republic of Self (New Issues) and Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter (Anhinga Press)
In Fruit of the Earth, Wendt constantly looks around to ask, Where am I? Who am I? How can I make these two things, together, matter? Through answering these questions, she creates a lush, rich world where one’s place and identity are allowed to shift and realign themselves while still remaining true and real. –Elizabeth Deanna Morris Lakes in her JBC Book Review
In this powerful and exquisite collection of poems, Jamie Wendt … locates the interplay between the material and spiritual inheritance of land and people through themes of place, and displacement. In poems of vivid imagery and a strong, narrative voice, her experiences and questions are lived out while allowing that there is mystery that can only be accessed by the act of choosing, and choosing again, over a lifetime. Central to all is what it means to be a people uprooted and displaced through time while having a communal and religious identity as the locus of permanence even when the search for home—for security, freedom and peace–is an ongoing struggle. –Michelle Everett Wilbert in her Mom Egg Review Book Review
Despite numerous tangible references to place, time, and milestones throughout the collection, the author compliments these anchors with her vivid figurative work. Wendt’s lyrical use of language and keen observation of the things around her makes for imagery that activates each of the senses and enhances their play upon each other. In the reading of each poem, the mind displays a rich palette of images, and the reader develops a capacity to narrate these as a story. There is a harmonious centrality to each poem, where the acute sense of place or time gives way to simplicity of feeling. With her mastery over the temporal, Wendt crafts moments of refuge and suspension in her deeply nostalgic descriptions of memory. –Sarah Plummer in her Literary Mama Book Review
Watch: Interview with Highland Park Poetry (2019)
Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility
Anthology of Women Writers edited by Andrea Fekete & Lara Lillibridge
Cynren Press (April 2019)
To purchase, please click HERE.
Check out a contributor promo video featuring Jamie Wendt!
Watch a virtual poetry reading with Jamie Wendt and other contributors from Feminine Rising.
When We Turned Within: Reflections on COVID-19
Anthology of Jewish writers and rabbis
edited by Rabbi Menachem Creditor and Sarah Tuttle-Singer
(Independently Published; June 2020)
To purchase, please click HERE.
Jamie Wendt is a contributing poet.
Jamie Wendt 