Gundy gets world’s love

"I stand in the shower every morning and plot how to make the world love me," read Jeff Gundy from “A Smile,” his first poem at the November Writer’s Read.

Originally from Flannigan, Ill., Gundy graduated from Goshen College and has taught at both Hesston and Bluffton. As a writer of poetry and creative nonfiction, he made his third appearance at an EMU Writer’s Read last Thursday.

"I think as long as he keeps writing books, we’ll keep inviting him," said Professor Carroll Yoder, who introduced Gundy.

The title of Gundy’s latest book, Scattering Point, comes from the name of a creek in a book he ran across called Soil Maps of Livingstone County and connects to the way various streams run into the book. After Gundy finished a book on his father’s family, his mother asked when he would write about her side. Gundy described his father’s side of the family as having a "spooky normalcy," but his mother’s side was more complicated. The result was a book that incorporated many topics including Mennonite history and his grandmother’s story.

Gundy read several sections from his book about traveling through places important to Mennonite history. Using both a contemporary travel guide and a guide from a Mennonite historian, the journey juxtaposed perspectives of past and present.

Gundy also told the story of a relative named Christian, who after his father’s remarriage was sent to California with another family, but left them there to make a three-year journey home.

Gundy said he had planned to write a historical novel about Christian, "and then I realized I don’t like historical novels," he said. Instead, he wrote a series of possibilities for what might have happened, called "Christian in the West: Stories that Could Be True."

Selected poetry for the evening included "Shelter," written during a Friday evening on the front porch; "Chainsaw Inquirers," which poses questions about what chainsaws love, fear, dream and grieve; "Deerfly," in which Gundy puts himself in the place of birds, plants, pond, sun, himself, and a deerfly; and "Epiphany with Sirens and Whitetail," which subtly protests the war in Iraq. He wrote "Epiphany with Sirens and Whitetail" for the Christmas paper in 2002. As the nation seemed headed toward war, the story of Herod’s order to kill all the infants got stuck in his head. The piece compares this "mad king" to Bush as both turned to violent means to ensure their security.

The final reading, "The Cookie Poem" came from a sociological conference on family held at Goshen College. Based on the phrase "here are my sad cookies," the poem lists cookies personified with a wide variety of characteristics that make them a microcosm for the world.

Gundy answered questions after the reading on topics such as what poets he found inspiring and what makes a Mennonite writer. The latter he deferred as a complicated question worthy of graduate students.

When asked about other writing plans, Gundy said he enjoyed getting lost in the worlds of Science Fiction novels, but he considers himself "too close to ADD" to write fiction himself.

He compared this problem to the example of an Argentinian writer who wrote three-page commentaries on imaginary books so that he could capture the ideas without investing the time it would take to write a novel.