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Welcome to my home page.
Here you'll find some work I've done, information about books I've published
and classes I teach, and eventually, I hope, more.
Jeff Gundy
For my course web
pages and information, click here. |
Wow. It’s been a
long, long time since I updated this page . . .
But my new book is out! Songs from an
Empty Cage: Poetry, Mystery, Anabaptism, and Peace contains most
of the literary essays I’ve written since Walker in the Fog appeared in 2005.
Many of them take a theopoetic approach to subjects I’ve
been pondering for years: poetry, God, heresy, peace, martyr stories, music,
metaphor, and on and on. I hope that anyone interested in these things will
find it worthwhile. Order it from Amazon
or Barnes
& Noble, and read an excerpt here.
From the back cover:
In accessible, lyrical prose, Jeff Gundy takes on poetry, peace, heresy, martyr
stories, music, metaphor, and more in this sequel to his award-winning Walker
in the Fog: On Mennonite Writing. Is there a tradition that is at once
rebellious, deeply communal, wildly individual, and truly peaceable? If we
recognize and create it, Gundy insists, the answer is yes.
Donald Revell, Author, Pennyweight Windows: New
and Selected Poems, says that "Time was that American writing was intent
upon entirety. Language was pilgrimage, and cadence kept the rhythms of a
motive faith. It was a time of outrageous piety (whose upper register is
poetry) and joyful critique (whose upper register is poetry)-the time of
Thoreau's Week and Whitman's Specimen Days and Henry Miller's Air-Conditioned
Nightmare. I am pleased to say that, in Gundy's Songs, that time is now."
Jean Janzen, Author, Entering the Wild: Essays on Faith and Writing and
many poetry volumes, affirms that "With his lively prose and inquiring
spirit, Gundy woos us into his poetic exploration of theology, a fertile
journey through the complications of belief, desire, and mystery, which leads
to an open table of love, generosity, beauty, and hope. This book feeds the
soul."
As Gregory Wolfe, Editor, Image, observes, "Yeats once said: 'We
make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with
ourselves, poetry.' Gundy's rich, evocative book shows how Mennonite writers
have made poetry out of their lover's quarrel with the Anabaptist tradition. In
his graceful exposition we see how tradition and transgression are intertwined
in one generative, ongoing story."
And Scott Holland, in the Foreword, reports that "Reading Gundy's Songs,
I smiled in delight and satisfaction at a writer whose deep soul is
simultaneously Romantic, Anabaptist, and Transcendental."
Some new things
as of August 2011:
Recent poems online in The Adirondack Review, Arsenic Lobster and Hamilton Stone Review.
A new interview with Cameron Conaway is here, and an “Artist of the
Month” feature from Image: A Journal of
the Arts and Religion is here.
A new book I'm pleased to be part of: Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets, ed.
Todd F. Davis and Erin Murphy (SUNY, 2010).
And things not quite so new:
Spoken among the Trees was
released in fall 2007 as part of the Akron Poetry Series.
Click here for the
University of Akron Press description and ordering information, or here and here
for a few sample poems. If you'd like a signed copy, contact me here.
The title poem of Spoken among the Trees, "Night, the Astonishing .
. . ," appeared on Verse
Daily on August 15, 2008, and should be available in their archives for
some time.
Spoken among the Trees won the Society of
Midland Authors 2007 Poetry Award, given each year for the
best book of poems in the 12-state Midwestern region.
A review of Spoken
among the Trees by Cameron Conaway (from Rattle).
I was in Salzburg on a Fulbright lectureship at the University of Salzburg with
my wife Marlyce from March-June of 2008. I taught three courses in the American
Studies department, and we had the chance to travel a good bit, both in Austria
and in neighboring countries. I kept a somewhat intermittent travel blog with
text and photos that is still available here, though I will not be making
more entries. A more serious project on this experience is in the works, God
willing and the creek don’t rise.
Here's one token photograph--taken on a sunny Sunday about 4/5 of the way to
the top of the Gaisberg, the mountain on the
northeast side of Salzburg.
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My chapbook Greatest Hits 1984-2003 appeared in 2003 in Pudding
House's Greatest Hits series. It includes a dozen poems and an introductory
essay. For ordering information, click here.
Other books and related links:
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Scattering Point: The
World in a Mennonite Eye
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Rhapsody with Dark Matter
Bottom Dog Press, 2000.
From "Rain": |
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A Community
of Memory : My Days with George and Clara |
Updated!
Poems and prose excerpts from
various sources.
An
excerpt from an essay on my work by David Wright
Course materials and links
Yes, these are long outdated, but might be of interest to someone
out there in web land.
LAS 302-02 Issues in Modern America Newly updated for
spring 2009.
Modern Lit: Surrealism to
Slipstream Information Click here for information and links related to
English 265, surrealism, magic realism, and slipstream fiction.
LAS 301-01 Issues in Modern America
Ongoing site for this course for spring 2006.
Mennonite Literature
Page Created for ENG 265: Studies in Modern Lit: Mennonite Literature.
Home Page
for Goshen Poetry Workshop, April 2004
For the source list I compiled for my
"Versions of Wonder" workshop at the 2007 Cornerstone Festival Imaginarium
, click here.
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at gundyj@bluffton.edu
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This page
created with Netscape Composer 7.2, persistence, aggravation, ingenuity and
pure dumb luck.
Last modified 10/11/2013