Rush to the Lake

by Forrest Gander

With this extraordinary first collection, Forrest Gander achieves the artful connection between head and heart and loins. These are poems whose chronic desires are poised on a consciousness of equal caliber and force. Line by line he detaches the familiar from old surroundings in language exquisitely cultivated to the edge of excess. It is poetry that prompts us to exult in our intricacy. In allowing us into "the inner circle by the boathouse," Rush To The Lake both disturbs our equilibria and restores us to the unflinching wonder of daily light.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1988

About the author

Born in the Mojave Desert, Forrest Gander grew up in Virginia and spent significant periods in San Francisco, Dolores Hidalgo (Mexico), and Eureka Springs, Arkansas before moving to Rhode Island. He holds degrees in literature and in geology, a subject that recurs in his writing and for which his work has been connected to ecological poetics.

Collaboration has been an important engagement for Gander who, over the years, has worked with artists such as Ann Hamilton, Sally Mann, Eiko & Koma, Lucas Foglia, Ashwini Bhat, Richard Hirsch & Michael Rogers. He also translates extensively and has edited several anthologies of contemporary poetry from Latin America, Spain, and Japan.

He writes across the genres. A recent project with the Chilean poet Raul Zurita is Pinholes in the Night Essential Poems from Latin America. Other titles by Gander include The Trace, a novel set on the border with Mexico; Fungus Skull Eye Wing Selected Poems of Alfonso D'Aquino, translations; and Redstart an Ecological Poetics, essays and poems written with John Kinsella. Gander's 2011 book of poems, Core Samples from the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

7/31

This collection felt very much of the mid-Eighties. Images here in Forrest Gander's debut collection are monolithic, solid, resonant, haloed. A friend recommended his desert poems. Which I may read next. This collection is rooted in Japan, and he ponders place and tales and myth and land and the body.

#SealeyChallenge #ForrestGander

From "Loiter"

"I clear my way through the fog
as music will break through static.
The frogs strike up,
a window goes out
in the Home for Elders.
Don’t you wonder why
it is built far from anywhere,
as though memory needs a terrain
for forgetting; blind
driveways to lost roads."



https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...

[Adam]

much different. early. start elsewhere.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can definitely tell its an early book compared to his more recent stuff.