{"id":37161,"date":"2018-03-01T15:18:54","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T20:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=37161"},"modified":"2018-03-16T13:42:34","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T17:42:34","slug":"bluffton-prof-and-poet-jeff-gundy-presents-at-march-15-writers-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/bluffton-prof-and-poet-jeff-gundy-presents-at-march-15-writers-read\/","title":{"rendered":"Bluffton prof and poet Jeff Gundy presents at March 15 Writers Read"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just as \u201cit\u2019s possible to live on bread and water,\u201d Jeff Gundy says, \u201cit\u2019s possible to live without poetry. But life is better with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gundy will present his poetry and other works at a <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/language-and-literature\/writers-read\/\">Writers Read<\/a> event in Eastern Mennonite University\u2019s Common Grounds at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 15.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough he has described himself and other artists as existing on the fringes of Mennonite community,\u00a0Gundy \u201cis widely embraced as a leading Mennonite poet, and he is well-recognized in the wider literary milieu,\u201d says\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.emu.edu\/faculty-staff\/?show=beachyk\">Kirsten Beachy<\/a>, assistant professor and director of the EMU core curriculum.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"highlight highlight-right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.terrain.org\/2017\/poetry\/jeff-gundy\/\">Hear poet Jeff Gundy introduce and read three poems<\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Gundy\u2019s books are many, among them three that garnered acclaim: <em>Abandoned Homeland<\/em> (Bottom Dog Press, 2016) was shortlisted for the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, 2016; for <em>Somewhere Near Defiance<\/em> (Anhinga Press, 2014) he was named the <a href=\"http:\/\/ohiopoetryassn.blogspot.com\/2016\/02\/a-brief-look-at-ohio-poet-of-year.html\">2015 Ohio Poet of the Year<\/a>; and <em>Spoken among the Trees<\/em> (Akron University Press, 2007) earned the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Award. His poems have also appeared in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corpse.org\/archives\/issue_9\/poesy\/gundy.htm\">Exquisite Corpse<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/northamericanreview.org\/notes-on-brief-history-of-midwestern-civilzation-by-jeff-gundy\">North American Review<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.christiancentury.org\/contributor\/jeff-gundy\">The Christian Century<\/a> and elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>A professor at Bluffton University, Gundy also plays guitar and writes songs and nonfiction essays \u2013 see <a href=\"http:\/\/brevitymag.com\/current-issue\/mud-and-gravel\/\">Mud and Gravel<\/a> in the Jan. 2018 issue of <em>Brevity<\/em> and his collection <em>Songs from an Empty Cage<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>At EMU, he said he will \u201clook for a curve in the whole reading, a kind of rhythm perhaps\u201d that will include tested favorites, a balance of lighter and more serious poems, and \u201ca few new poems, just to see how they sound when read aloud to a real audience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPoetry is a tremendous personal and communal resource, a great storehouse of wisdom, beauty, consolation and joy,\u201d Gundy said recently \u2013 and then quickly added, \u201cThis is not to make such grand claims for my poems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Others, however, make those claims for him. Fellow poet Philip Metres has said that \u201cGundy\u2019s poetry reminds us, over and over, that paying attention to the delights and troubles of existence becomes a kind of psalm to this botched and beautiful creation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gundy \u201cturns a critical yet compassionate eye to the Mennonites and the broader culture,\u201d Beachy said. \u201cHis poems tend to be lyrical and are frequently funny and\/or political.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/work-and-hope\/2010\/08\/16\/c-is-for-cookie\/\">2010 Work and Hope post<\/a>, Laura Lehman Amstutz wrote that Gundy\u2019s \u201cThe Cookie Poem\u201d from <em>Rhapsody with Dark Matter<\/em> (Bottom Dog Press, 2000) \u201cis about remembering who we are. It points to Anabaptist history in imagery, and reminds me of a God who delights in us all, even in our failures, collective and individual&#8230;. The idea of God looking at me and saying, in Cookie Monster\u2019s voice \u2018ooohhhh cookie!\u2019 makes me giggle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gundy will sell and sign books at the Writers Read, and said he always hopes to meet new people, \u201cespecially students who very likely don\u2019t know much about me or my work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Judging from past experience, said language and literature professor Vi Dutcher, those students will be glad to have met him. \u201cStudents enjoy being in his presence and discussing poetry with him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just as \u201cit\u2019s possible to live on bread and water,\u201d Jeff Gundy says, \u201cit\u2019s possible to live without poetry. But life is better with it.\u201d Gundy will present his poetry <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/bluffton-prof-and-poet-jeff-gundy-presents-at-march-15-writers-read\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"more-link\">... read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">about Bluffton prof and poet Jeff Gundy presents at March 15 Writers Read<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7931,17562,356,5183],"tags":[9279,13670],"feature":[17426],"class_list":["post-37161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-digest","category-language-and-literature","category-music","tag-kirsten-beachy","tag-vi-dutcher","feature-myemu-feature"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bluffton prof and poet Jeff Gundy presents at March 15 Writers Read - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/bluffton-prof-and-poet-jeff-gundy-presents-at-march-15-writers-read\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bluffton prof and poet Jeff Gundy presents at March 15 Writers Read - EMU News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Just as \u201cit\u2019s possible to live on bread and water,\u201d Jeff Gundy says, \u201cit\u2019s possible to live without poetry. 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