Twice Alive
Format:Paperback
Publisher:New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published:28th May '21
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In the searing poems of his new collection, Twice Alive, the Pulitzer Prize–winner Forrest Gander addresses the exigencies of our historical moment and the intimacies, personal and environmental, that bind us to others and to the world. Drawing from his training in geology and his immersion in Sangam literary traditions, Gander invests these poems with an emotional intensity that illuminates our deep-tangled interrelations.
While conducting fieldwork with a celebrated mycologist, Gander links human intimacy with the transformative collaborations between species that compose lichens. Throughout Twice Alive, Gander addresses personal and ecological trauma—several poems focus on the devastation wrought by wildfires in California where he lives—but his tone is overwhelmingly celebratory. Twice Alive is a book charged with exultation and tenderness.
"In Gander's follow up to his extraordinary book of loss and lamentation, Be With, (for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize), this poet of metaphysical abstraction, Eros, and intimate observation — and even adulation — of the natural world finds fresh metaphors for the sudden and uneasy onset of new love." -- NPR
"A restlessly experimental writer." -- Robert Hass
"Gander’s verses have a shattering, symphonic quality." -- Tess Taylor - The New York Times
"Gander’s love for formal, even archaic language and the quiet complexity of his syntax can build striking abstract landscapes in which the material and spiritual worlds seem equally intelligent." -- Tony Hoagland
"This is an ecologically aware, tender, and captivating work." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Forrest Gander's new book of poetry, Twice Alive, is a lush, sensual addition to his formidable body of work." -- Meryl Natchez - Los Angeles Review of Books
"Twice Alive investigates and celebrates “the wheeling life around us” with pincer-like precision and unfailing lyricism. The poet is at the height of his considerable powers and, in consequence, makes our heedful attention imperative." -- Albert Mobilio - Hyperallergic
- Short-listed for National Book Awards (Poetry) 2021
ISBN: 9780811230292
Dimensions: 218mm x 142mm x 10mm
Weight: 130g
96 pages