As Is: Poems

As Is gathers everyday poems written over time and mostly at the poet’s home in the Ridge and Valley province of northern Appalachia. This work pays attention to the world as it is with curiosity, candor, and delight. Seeking connection with others and the earth and savoring the fine details of a messy life, these poems reckon with the demands of family, pandemic, aging, and loss even as they witness injustice, violence, environmental degradation, and climate crisis.

Julia Spicher Kasdorf is the author of Sleeping Preacher, Eve’s Striptease, Poetry in America, and Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields, a documentary project created in collaboration with photographer Steven Rubin. She has also published a collection of essays, The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life, and a biographical study, Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American.