Sleeping Preacher

Have you ever put off reading a book for one reason or another, only to finally read it and desperately regret your years of hesitation? That's what happened to me last week with Julia Kasdorf's Sleeping Preacher. Kasdorf was one of my instructors at Penn State. I've always loved her poems (I wrote about one here), but Sleeping Preacher was her first book, a book that I knew she had a love-hate relationship with. I just wasn't sure that it would be as moving as her later work, so I put it off.

But this book was far better than I ever expected. Kasdorf has described it as her "where I'm from" book, the collection that she wrote about her Mennonite family, growing up in small town Pennsylvania, and leaving that world for New York. It's a stunning collection: clear, purposeful, understated, and sparklingly lyrical. Kasdorf writes the type of poetry that gives you a sense of not just a time or place or experience, but of the woman behind the poems, the personality and passions that paint her experiences with meaning. It's no wonder that, out of 900 other first book manuscripts, Sleeping Preacher won the 1991 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize.

Kasdorf starts the collection out with a whammy of a poem "Green Market, New York", which places her in conversation with a Pennsylvanian farmers' market vendor in the heart of New York City. It's not just a good poem--it also serves as the book's thesis, flinging the whole text into tension and motion:

"'Do you live in the city?' she asks. 'Do you like it?'
I say no. And that was no lie, Emma Peachey.
I don't like New York, but sometimes these streets
hold me as hard as we're held by rich earth.
I have not forgotten that Bible verse:
Whoever puts his hand to the plow and looks back
is not fit for the kingdom of God."

From there, the procession of quiet, kind poems moves from Kasdorf's parents' childhood into her own childhood and adulthood. And while the book is known for its Mennonite subjects, some of my favorite poems were the later ones, the adult poems that are connected to other places and personalities far from Kasdorf's childhood. I loved "For Weatherly, Still in New York":

"This place could make you well.
Night, a black healer, comes so dark it kills
as it cures. Stars slice your fingers
if you try to catch them, falling.
This is no dinner invitation [. . .]
you can't stay on the Lower East Side,
or at least stay there and stay sane.
Come, lose your lease for this place."

"The View" was another favorite. The poem is dedicated to a friend who has moved to the shores of Lake Michigan. I especially love the subtle, lilting rhymes nestled within the lines of this poem. It's a technique that, I will admit, I plan to do my darnedest to steal from Kasdorf!

"[. . .] Last week, a wind charged
off the lake so cold pigeons froze to the walks,
four iridescent necks just on your block.
But all the cold carcasses in Chicago
mean nothing next to your view. Although
I never held still for your caresses,
I admit your talk makes me jealous:
the way you speak of the lake like a love
and refuse to hang drapes, the way you scrub
the panes until they seem to vanish into
the view. And lake and sky embrace you."

Julia has a new book of poems out called Poetry in America. Go get yourself some--I know I'm going to.