Winner of the 2003 Editions Prize: Deerflies by Jeff Gundy

Jeff Gundy’s first full-length book was Inquiries, and the title of that book describes both the subject and method of his poems. His poetry is one of seeming informality, seeming casualness as it surveys the world on both large and small scales; but beneath the jaunty lines lurk the most probing questions about human experience. In Deerflies, his new collection and winner of the Editions Poetry Prize, Gundy continues his journey: walking lightly but looking deeply.

Nancy Dasher Award from the College English Association of Ohio

Sample Poems by Jeff Gundy

Jeff Gundy is Professor of English at Bluffton College in Ohio.  He is the author of two collections of nonfiction prose, A Community of Memory: My Days with George and Clara (Illinois) and Scattering Point: The World in a Mennonite  Eye (SUNY) as well as three previous books of poetry, Rhapsody with Dark Matter (Bottom Dog) Flatlands (Cleveland State) and Inquiries (Bottom Dog).

“Truly a wonderful book. The portrait of the speaker that emerges is one of a neighborly metaphysician, a deep, quirky, philosophical, humorous mind surveying the world and everything in it with great care, compassion, pity.”—Li-Young Lee

“Jeff Gundy isn't afraid of writing in the direction of the weird,  strange, uncanny or odd--all words he isn't afraid to use in a poem  either--nor does he fear writing directly toward beauty, truth and God. Rambling and clipped by turns, these poems are first of all immediate, marked by an ease of articulation that makes them feel almost baggy, a pleasure to read, the way casual and flirtatious conversations with laid-back strangers can be pleasurable. But try to write an imitation of one of Gundy's poems, and you will hit the art that makes these easy-going, shoulder-shrugging, almost-loafing, leaping lines take flight.” —Julia Kasdorf

ISBN 1932339353, 136 pages, $17.00

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