Jeff Gundy, who writes about everything from “the peaceful Menno code” to the question of “one true creek” and “the opposite of guitar,” presented in Common Grounds last Thursday, March 15.
I arrived in the coffee shop and settled down on one of the cushy, red couches with my cookie, brownie, and nuts, ready for words. Kirsten Beachy, assistant writing professor, introduced our guest, highlighting the variety of his work and the adventures they had had together on a canoeing trip. Then Gundy stepped up to the podium, a short, older man with a charming smile, a coffee-colored velvet suit jacket, and a tie decorated with a guitar.
Gundy grinned and told the audience, “This is gonna be more like a concert and less like a lecture.” Hence the guitar tie.
Gundy’s selections mixed anecdotes from traveling and teaching with humor, philosophy, and Mennonite themes. As a prolific poet, he shared pieces from a variety of books, including his in-progress manuscript, taking us on a journey through the progression of his work.
Gundy’s volumes of poetry were directly inspired by his life experiences at the time he was writing. For example, he shared a poem called “Deerfly” that had been inspired by his time at a workshop in the woods for naturalists and writers. He also shared a whimsical poem for his time as a teacher, entitled “Fifty Billion Planets,” in which both Hemingway and Marie Antoinette come to visit his classroom, which muses as to whether or not the very wealthy are the same as you and I. Once again with the themes of nature, he shared a poem from his canoe trip, called “Contemplation on Lake Insula.”
True to his promise that he was going to give a concert, not a lecture, Gundy suddenly picked up a guitar. He said that he had decided to put some of his poems to music. Although he had some technical difficulties, the music he had added to his words, which were sometimes sung and sometimes just spoken to the background of his guitar chords, gave his poems a whole new resonance. The audience clapped enthusiastically after each one, especially a satire of strict teachers entitled “The Opposite of Guitar.”
Gundy then shared some poems from the book he compiled based on his time teaching at LCC International University in Lithuania. One of these was in response to the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, whose ideas were being taught at the university while Gundy was there. He revealed that even though his poems are in third person, often referring to “the traveler,” they are really about himself.
Gundy opened the Writers Read up for questions. I was intrigued to hear him talk a bit more about his writing process. When asked how many drafts he had for each poem, he replied, “Between one and fifty.” For him, it all depended on how easily the poem came out. He said that he usually wrote his poems out on paper and then typed them up on the computer. He added that poems that capture moments are much easier to write than poems with political themes.
One of the more interesting things he said was that he has noticed an assumption in literary circles that poems will be like nonfiction. He likes to rebel against this by adding elements similar to magical realism, like he did in the poem “50 Billion Planets.” His comment on this poem: “Everything in it is true except the things that aren’t.”
I fully enjoyed the variety of his performance. He managed to incorporate both music and jokes into his reading, which is something not all poets can pull off. His constant enthusiasm and wit kept the evening moving. Perhaps there were less questions at the end than he had hoped for, but that might be because his “concert” left the audience too satisfied to raise any inquiries.
