Poetry in America - University of Pittsburgh Press

Poetry in America

I admire Julia Kasdorf's poems for their alert eye, attentive mind, vigilant heart, all fused into a single, sometimes painfully aware, vision of the world. Bristling with narrative surfaces, angular emotional interiors, humorous sympathies, her poems move in careful zigzags, like a bat. Her politically astute voice knows, understands, and without sentimentality embraces a universe of ordinary lives and unsung places—celebrating women's work, or her daughter's rapt in-taking of all that is new to her, or the nature of 'Poetry in America,' or the existential texture of Mennonite life, or simply sun flashing on a spider's thread, a blade of grass, / my own tanned skin. Plainspoken, both intimate and discreet, these poems take hold.

Eamon Grennan

Poetry in America offers extravagantly formed lyric and narrative poems that function like works of social realism for our times: hard times, wartime, divorce, times of downturn and dissipated resources. Where, in such times, can poetry emerge, the book asks—and answers—again and again. Largely set in rural places and small towns, these poems are politically committed but deeply sensuous, emotionally complex and compassionate. They take up the everyday in meaningful ways, and deliver it with blunt force, yet not without hope or bright humor.

More Praise

"Poetry in America updates our aesthetic for a new millennium. Bursting with sagging night diapers, tattooed students with HIV, cardio kickboxing, instructions on how to open a clove of garlic, bleak poetry readings in megastores that somehow transcend their settings, and legions of everyday female heroes, Kasdorf shows us how our poetry has opened its doors over the past few decades to admit the visions and voices of all kinds of Americans and their poetic testimonies. This collection is inspiring and fearless."

Kate Daniels

Those who have the courage to delve into 'Poetry in America' will be richly rewarded by its beauty, depth and emotional resonance. The collection may be rooted in loss, but its poems offer readers the warmth and honesty of an intimate encounter.

Voices of Central Pennsylvania

Poetry may not be popular in America, but for its advocates, Kasdorf's collection of poems will ensure continuing devotion.

Womenis Review of Books

'Poetry in America' demonstrates a commitment to the lyric narrative form Kasdorf has chosen for her previous books, and its craft is strong as tempered steel. . . . [It] continues to cultivated lived experience in often rocky terrain, as the poet offers a rereading of cultural narratives and reaffirms the arduous labor of wrestling meaning from everyday sorrows 'striking as death / and common as dirt.'

The Mennonite Quarterly Review

Sounds every note on the scale of tones, forms, and intensities. There are notes of toughness and tenderness, notes of witness and experience—all the notes, to my ear, in tune.

PoemoftheWeek.org

Table of Contents

Sample

88 Pages, 6 x 9 in.

August, 2011

isbn : 9780822961567

Series

Pitt Poetry Series

Subjects

about the author

Julia Spicher Kasdorf is the author of Sleeping Preacher, Eve’s Striptease, Poetry in America, and Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields, a documentary project created in collaboration with photographer Steven Rubin. She has also published a collection of essays, The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life, and a biographical study, Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American.

learn more