Milo Wippermann is the author of Joan of Arkansas (forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse) and Pleasure as a Series of Objects (Patient Sounds). Other work can be found in jubilat, Omniverse, Second Factory, Oversound, and elsewhere. They have an MFA from Brown University and live in New York City.
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Joan of Arkansas
Last year, Simone had been voted “Most Christ-Like” of the Domremy Catholic High School Freshman Class.
Privately, she hoped that she did have God’s grace to thank for her ease in the world. Something about grace, even though one need not do anything to receive it, denoted heroism. It was heroism in the sense of being singled out and chosen—an idea that accounted for and made tolerable the ways in which Simone felt entirely alone.
Nothing, she knew, had been easy for Joan—nothing except talking to God. “If you want God to talk to you, you have to be silent,” Simone knew from one of Joan’s videos. She had attempted silence in every form she could fathom but even her attempts felt loud. How to empty herself of her self, she wondered.
Joan of Arkansas:- Print Books
- Ugly Duckling Presse
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Joan of Arkansas
FATHER JOE
I don’t think Joan is…crazy
JOAN
Why would God choose a crazy person to be
Their messenger?
CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Why do you keep talking about God in the plural???
CHARLES VII
That certainly sounds
polytheistic to me
JOAN
There is only one God
and we are all Their children
Joan of Arkansas:- Print Books
- Ugly Duckling Presse
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Joan of Arkansas
ANGEL 2
“Therefore we have Joan
who is photogenic
and will die for
our emission sins”
ANGEL 3
We need the people to understand
Their always imminent closeness
ANGEL 1
In the spirit of apocalyptic times,
God is working with a logic of immediacy
ANGEL 2
The pixels of Their image must
illuminate the photons out in the world!
ANGEL 3
Your low-resolution self, Joan
allows room for concept
Joan of Arkansas:- Print Books
- Ugly Duckling Presse
"The lucidity of Milo Wippermann’s aphoristic writing brings to mind the way in which crisp light on a late summer day announces fall’s inevitability. This is decisive, light-handed, piercingly intelligent insight on all the ways in which we desire." —Mónica de la Torre, author of Repetition Nineteen [on Pleasure as a Series of Objects]
"If there is labor in poetry, Wippermann shows us its sweat, breaks its magic. This book is the working of a time mechanic, meticulous in its gearing. There is pleasure in this book; for the joker, the trickster, the magician and the architect alike." —Grant Souders, Patient Presses [on Pleasure as a Series of Objects]
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Ugly Duckling Presse
- Print Books
There’s a particular effervescent joy to stubbornly unclassifiable writing, and the reward of reading Milo Wippermann’s work – scrambling to keep up as they bend the expectations of both poetry and drama – lies in surrendering rigid categories to marvel at the wit and erudite imagination. Theirs is a climate-anxious vision marked not by didacticism, but by sympathy. It conveys rapture even as it jokes with angels.