The author's training as a geologist influences the themes and forms of the poems and the single essay in this book. Often his poetic forms are determined by rock characteristics, even when the concerns of the poem are intensely human. For instance, a poem about a set of perceived relationships at twilight from the "Crystal" section titled "yellow quartz" breaks into six lines and references the passage of light because quartz crystals are pellucid and hexagonal. In another sequence, "Line of Descent," sharply shifting lines of poetry enact the cutbacks and bends of the path into the Grand Canyon by which father and son descend through lines of sediment and lines of story along the bloodline that ties them together. Without calling attention to themselves, such forms underpin the strong emotional terrain upon which all the poems, whether focused on erotic love, fatherhood, the histories of empire, or the dialogue between scientific rationalism and poetic imagination, are situated. With an eye toward what we stand on literally, Gander concentrates our attention toward what we stand on and for in our various relationships with others and with the world
The author's training as a geologist influences the themes and forms of the poems and the single essay in this book. Often his poetic forms are determined by rock characteristics, even when the concerns of the poem are intensely human. For instance, a poem about a set of perceived relationships at twilight from the "Crystal" section titled "yellow quartz" breaks into six lines and references the passage of light because quartz crystals are pellucid and hexagonal. In another sequence, "Line of Descent," sharply shifting lines of poetry enact the cutbacks and bends of the path into the Grand Canyon by which father and son descend through lines of sediment and lines of story along the bloodline that ties them together. Without calling attention to themselves, such forms underpin the strong emotional terrain upon which all the poems, whether focused on erotic love, fatherhood, the histories of empire, or the dialogue between scientific rationalism and poetic imagination, are situated. With an eye toward what we stand on literally, Gander concentrates our attention toward what we stand on and for in our various relationships with others and with the world
1. Organized around geological themes2. Exploratory and innovative poetic forms3. Erotically charged, psychologically turbulent
Forrest Gander has degrees in geology and English literature. His recent books include the novel As a Friend, the book of poems Eye Against Eye, and the translation Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho (a PEN Translation Prize Finalist), all from New Directions. A United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow, Gander is recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim, Howard, and Whiting foundations. He has authored essays for numerous journals including The Nation, Boston Review, and The Providence Journal. He is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Brown University in the United States. Rikki Ducornet is the author of two short-story collections, five books of poetry, and seven novels, including The Fan-Maker's Inquisition and Gazelle. She is also a painter whose work has been exhibited widely. She lives in Denver, Colorado.
It isn’t long before the ethereal quality of these poems [in Torn
Awake] begins to remind you of similar effects in the work of T. S.
Eliot and the 17th century Anglo-Welsh mystic Henry Vaughan . . .
The voices vary throughout this book’s six highly speculative
sequences . . . yet again and again they call from their spectral
airiness a single recurring image, an elemental configuration of
man, woman and child. Indeed the book ends with a consideration of
just such a threesome frozen forever in the aftermath of an
earthquake on ancient Cyprus, with the speaker proposing that such
a piteous sight can be taken as either a story with no meaning or a
meaning beyond story. In the midst of such questioning, the only
reality is the poet’s unflinchingly curious mind.
*The New York Times Book Review*
Geologic codes, discoveries, plains, and entrances, Forrest
Gander’s long poems, transforming their language into imagery that
bristles with energy.
*The Bloomsbury Review*
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