Description: Art. Film. Philosophy. Music. "If Whitman were born in the Midwest to Mennonite parents, listened to Dylan and the Dead and loved to laugh at himself, he'd sound just like Jeff Gundy. 'I want the reader as far inside of my skin as possible,' he writes, in bemused poems that are in love with the productions of matter and time. 'How else to describe this absurd, lovely world?' he poses in the title poem of his warm and inviting ABANDONED HOMELAND. Gundy's 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."--Philip Metres
Brief description: Jeff Gundy, long-time professor of English at Bluffton University, has published six earlier books of poems and four of prose, most recently Somewhere Near Defiance (Anhinga, 2014), Songs from an Empty Cage: Poetry, Mystery, Anabaptism, and Peace (Cascadia, 2013), and Spoken Among the Trees (Akron, 2008). His earlier Bottom Dog books include Rhapsody with Dark Matter (2000) and Inquiries (1992).
A 2008 Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Salzburg, he taught at LCC International University in Klaipeda, Lithuania in spring 2015. He plays 6- and 12-string guitar, and puts in as many miles as possible on his road bike and (with his wife Marlyce) on their Cannondale tandem.His poems and essays have appeared in Georgia Review, The Sun, Image, Kenyon Review, Christian Century, Mennonite Quarterly Review, Conrad Grebel Review, Nimrod, and many other magazines Other honors and awards include multiple Ohio Arts Council fellowships, two C. Henry Smith Peace Lectureships, Bechtel and Yoder Lectureships, a Nancy Dasher Award, a Society of Midland Authors Poetry Award, and the 2015 Simons Lectures at Bethel (KS) College.
Review Quotes: If Whitman were born in the Midwest to Mennonite parents, listened to Dylan and the Dead and loved to laugh at himself, he�d sound just like Jeff Gundy. �I want the reader as far inside of my skin as possible,� he writes, in bemused poems that are in love with the productions of matter and time. �How else to describe this absurd, lovely world?� he poses in the title poem of his warm and inviting Abandoned Homeland. Gundy�s 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. Philip Metres, author of Sand Opera