ISBN: 0811213811

[SR: 1639639], Paperback, [EAN: 9780811213813], New Directions, New Directions, Book, [PU: New Directions], New Directions, Science & Steepleflower is a breakthrough book for Forrest Gand… More...

[SR: 1639639], Paperback, [EAN: 9780811213813], New Directions, New Directions, Book, [PU: New Directions], New Directions, Science & Steepleflower is a breakthrough book for Forrest Gander, a poet whose richness of language and undaunted lyric passion land him in traditions running from Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Duncan and Michael Ondaatje. His poetry has been called "desperately beautiful" by Thom Gunn in Agni Review, and "original and fascinating" by John Ashbery. With poems in the leading journals of the day -- American Poetry Review, Grand Street, Conjunctions, The Boston Review, to name just a few -- Gander plumbs the erotic depths of human interaction with the land. The poems in Science & Steepleflower test this relationship with what Publisher's Weekly has called "an inbred (and often haunting) spirituality", bringing us to new vistas of linguistic and perceptive grace., There's a lustrous assurance to Forrest Gander's poems, as if each one were a solution to a problem the poet had worked out before he wrote a word. With his third book, Science & Steepleflower, Gander also proves that he is among the most gifted and accomplished poets of his generation. The collection is remarkable for its mixture of forms and sheer immediacy. And the titles alone are proof of the author's philosophical ambition--there's "Duration and Simultaneity," "The History of Manifest Destiny," and "Deflection Toward the Relative Minor": But the clarity of the word "is" is a deception. Often Gander uses the equivalent of a wide-angle lens to examine the connection between the subject and its context. "Exhaustible Appearance," written in response to a photograph, begins: "Around the burning barn, stationary objects seem to stream. / Scrub brush, twigs in sinople dirt, dry weeds, / puffballs among scattered breccia and chert." Yes, the vocabulary is rather recondite. But as R.P. Blackmur pointed out in a famous essay on Wallace Stevens, a phrase like "the moonlight fubbed the girandoles" is perfectly comprehensible if you have a dictionary at hand. And in Gander's case, his esoteric lexicon draws attention not only to itself but to the hardscrabble landscape it describes. This is reality, he seems to be saying--even if you have to look it up. --Mark Rudman, 9966, United States, 10159391011, African American, 10159392011, Asian American, 10159394011, Hispanic American, 10159395011, Native American, 10159384011, Regional & Cultural, 10248, Poetry, 17, Literature & Fiction, 1000, Subjects, 283155, Books<

1998, ISBN: 9780811213813

Poetry, Buch, Softcover, [PU: New Directions Publishing Corporation], New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1998