MennoLink Books and Music

Copyright 2010 Cascadia Publishing House

Copyright 2010 Cascadia Publishing House

This landscape is both personal and mythological, evoking those invisible connections that Wagner sensed from her extended Mennonite family as well as from time spent in Kenya, Somalia, and among the Choctaw in Louisiana. These connections bring together what are frequently viewed as opposites: nature and humanity, the dead and the living, time and eternity, mythology, and truth.

In recalling the haunting cry of the muezzin from the mosque, the harmony of a cappella singing and the sure voice of the poet's grandfather as he "shook the cows from the shadows," Evening Chore reverberates with "voices inside of voices, / husks beneath husks."

Copyright 2005 Cascadia Publishing House

Copyright 2008 Cascadia Publishing Hosue

Walker in the Fog explores important Mennonite and related authors-Patrick Friesen, William Stafford, Julia Kasdorf, Jean Janzen, Keith Ratzlaff, and others-as well as crucial issues and themes, such as power and authority, myths of origin and possibility, heresy and community.

Walker combines revised versions of path-breaking critical essays such as "Humility in Mennonite Literature" and "American Mennonite Poetry and Poets" with Gundy's visionary and lyrical explorations of Mennonite writing and identity, including several chapters written especially for this book

"Do we all imagine that we have the clarity others lack, when in truth we are all just walkers in the same fog?" Gundy asks. "We might then determine to listen to others' reports of the weather and the landscape very carefully, to learn of that which is obscured in the fog from where we walk, but clearer from another point of view."

Copyright 2005 Cascadia Publishing House

Here is a collection of poems for all lovers of fine poetry tinged with faith and honesty about doubt.

These poems—augmented by John Leon's line drawings of the Cross based on Paul Friesen's crosses—fit into a long tradition of meditations on the Cross articulated in poetry, prose, painting, music. Some of the most famous of the literary meditations are those of St.John of the Cross, George Herbert, John Donne and Paul Gerhardt. The poems in On the Cross reflect these earlier meditations as well as cite paintings by Matthias Grünewald, El Greco, Salvador Dalí, and Giacometti. Music— Bach, hymns, gospel, folk—also enters the volume as a kind of meditation.

Readers are invited to read these devotional poems and then engage in their own meditations. The poems in this volume are but the beginning of an approach to a symbol that leads up to the spiritual life that begins in the teachings of Christ.

Copyright 2005 Cascadia Publishing House

The title poem meditates on Jesus' warning that if his disciples stay quiet, "The very stones will cry out." And the voices of these stones, joined with those of biblical characters, reluctant believers, and exultant skeptics suggest how poetry might still have a place in the life of the faithful if they dare to "Let untamed language fall on a thousand unsuspecting tongues."

Copyright 2003.

Gingerich's poetry has been strongly influenced by her experiences as part of a Mennonite community and explores the tensions between individual identity and community loyalty. This tension has been expanded as she also creatively investigates her husband's unique and difficult upbringing in the former Yugoslavia where community loyalty turned into war.

These poems stay true to their complex questioning. With a sense of paradox and wit, a willingness to explore the poem's surprising turns and defer comfort, Gingerich builds an impressive collection of poetry that is urgent and compelling to any reader willing to explore the dark corners and sharp turns of any life's migration.

Copyright 2007 Cascadia Publishing House

Coyright 2005 Cascadia Publishing House