Forrest Gander
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Forrest Gander (b. 1956) is an American poet and the author of various books of poetry, essays, fiction, and work in translation.
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[edit] Life
Born in the Mojave Desert in 1956, he was raised in Virginia where he attended The College of William and Mary, majoring in geology, a subject referenced frequently in both his poems and essays. He received an M.A. in English from San Francisco State University and moved to Mexico, where he began to assemble work for Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women, a bilingual anthology. From Mexico, he moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where he worked as a printer, and then to Providence, Rhode Island. Gander is the recipient of honors including: The Whiting Writers' Award, a Howard Foundation Award, the Jessica Nobel Maxwell Memorial Prize, two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative North American Writing, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Yaddo. He has taught at Providence College and Harvard University. At present, he is Professor of English and Comparative Literatures at Brown University in Rhode Island.
[edit] Writing
His poetry is lyrical, but often complex rhythmically and structurally. Critic Karla Huston, writing in "Library Journal," notes that, "Owing to the poems' placement on the page and the near absence of punctuation, the reader is propelled through the verse, left with a sense of urgency and awe." Because of the frequency and particularity of Gander's references to the Virginia landscape, Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate, calls him "a Southern poet of a relatively rare kind, a restlessly experimental writer."
The subjects of Gander's formally innovative essays range from snapping turtles to translation to literary hoaxes. His critical essays have appeared in The Nation, The Boston Review, and The Providence Journal.
In 2008, New Directions published As a Friend, Gander's novel of a gifted man, a land surveyor, whose impact on those around him provokes an atmosphere of intense self-examination and eroticism.
[edit] Translation
Gander has been a translator of Latin American poetry. Besides editing an anthology of poetry by Mexican women, Gander has translated discrete volumes by Mexican poets Pura Lopez Colome and Coral Bracho. "The Night" (Princeton, 2007), the second book of his translations, with Kent Johnson, of Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz, won a PEN Translation Award. Gander's critically-acclaimed translations of the Chilean Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda are included in "The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems" (City Lights, 2004)
[edit] Selected publications
Rush to the Lake (poems, 1988)
Eggplants and Lotus Root (poems, 1991)
Lynchburg (poems, 1993)
Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women (anthology, 1993)
Deeds of Utmost Kindness (poems, 1994)
Science & Steepleflower (poems, 1998)
Torn Awake (poems, 2001)
No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez Colome (translation, 2002)
Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz (translation, with Kent Johnson, 2002)
Twelve X 12:00 (with Tjibbe Hooghiemstra, 2003)
The Blue Rock Collection (poems, 2004)
Sound of Summer Running (with Ray Meeks, 2005)
Eye Against Eye (poems, 2005)
A Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory and Transcendence (essays, 2005)
The Night by Jaime Saenz (translation with Kent Johnson, 2007)
Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho (translation, 2008)
As a Friend (novel, 2008)
[edit] External links
- Gander's Brown University homepage
- Podcast Recordings of Poetry
- Jacket author notes
- Essay: The Nymph Stick Insect: Observations on Science, Poetry, and Creation
- Mission Thief at Conjunctions
- Review of Eye Against Eye at Great American Pinup
- The East Village Poetry Web including audio
- Streaming audio and video of Gander's reading and lecture at Univ. of Chicago 2006
- 2001 NEA fellowship winner including audio, bio, and personal statement
