A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry

This unique and rewarding collection brings together for the first time an enticing harvest of poems by writers connected to an ethnic religious tradition dating back to 1525. Skillfully edited with attention to balance and variety, this highly readable book includes work from award-winning writers in the United States and Canada as well as surprising and accomplished new voices. As scholar Ervin Beck notes,""A Cappella invites the outsider to eavesdrop on a new community of poets."" Lyrical, provocative, and sometimes funny, these poems question orthodoxy and find beauty in unexpected places--from the earthy farm rituals of northern Minnesota farm life in Jean Janzen's""Chicken Guts,"" to the frontiers of cyberspace in David Waltner-Toews's""Teilhard de Chardin Surfs the Internet."" Anna Ruth Ediger Baehr transforms a stern patriarch in""I am Dancing with My Mennonite Father""; Julia Kasdorf explores what daughters can learn about sex through their mothers in""Eve's Striptease."" Jeff Gundy extends the boundaries of spirituality in his poem to St. John of the Cross,""Ancient Themes: The Night,"" and Sarah Klassen and Sheri Hostetler revisit historic Mennonite places and stories in""Russian Fable"" and""The Woman with the Screw in her Mouth Speaks."" In""A New Mennonite Replies to Julia Kasdorf,"" David Wright transplants the rural Mennonite potluck to an urban setting, while in""Burial Clothes,"" Jessica Smucker Falcon explores the melding of traditions as she juxtaposes the funeral of her Amish-Mennonite grandmother to that of her Cheyenne-Arapaho grandmother. Ann Hostetler's concise and illuminating introduction and helpful appendix to Mennonite history offer a valuable context in which to read these dynamic poems.