Eye Against Eye / Review
Reviewed by Bob Holman and Margery Snyder for The Best of 2005: Poetry Picks
Eye Against Eye (New Directions) is Forrest Gander’s deep rocking voyage from the shoals of the eyelash to the arc of the globe. Nobody starts more interior to reach out further through the guts of human suffering and passion to commune with the heavens. Gander’s attention to language seems both metaphysically dense and effortless, but he’s never anything but a friend standing next to you, telling it straight and story, seeing things the same time you do. His long poem about witnessing/participating in a mugging in San Francisco is something new, a personal narrative that slips artistry into love. Landscapes by Sally Mann open things out, too.