Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 1991 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize.
The poems in this book deal with life in a Pennsylvania Mennonite community and the tensions and conflicts that exist for the speaker as she tries to be true to two worlds, the other being New York City.
Review
"Kasdorf chronicles her difficult journey from the Mennonite community into which she was born to a secular life in New York City. The material presents an interesting and unusually close portrait of the Amish people--for the most part without sentimentality. . . . Paradoxically, the speaker justifies her new way of life by citing the lessons she learned as a child."
--Publishers Weekly
Review
“This is as good as poetry gets. The poems are tightly wrung, sweetness and pain intermingled.”
--Festival Quarterly
About the Author
Julia Spicher Kasdorf is associate professor of English and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of two other poetry collections: Eve’s Striptease and Poetry in America. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, and Poetry, as well as numerous anthologies, including the 2003 Pushcart collection. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Kasdorf is also the author of The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life and Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American.