Twice Alive / Review
At NPR by Craig Morgan Teicher
New Directions
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 in the life cycles of lichen, which is "theoretically immortal," can reproduce asexually, and achieves "a/ contested mutuality," a phrase that begins to describe Gander's sense of new love after grief. Despite Gander's affection for challenging scientific and philosophical vocabularies, this may be his most conversational and accessible book, in which he observes not only "Erogenous zones in oaks/ slung with/ stoles of lace lichen" but also the vision of a new love "when her lavish face turns toward him/ beaming, the corners of her eyes wind-wet."
It's not easy, nor merely fun, to fall in love, especially after loss (Gander's longtime partner, the poet C.D. Wright, died in 2016), and these poems — set in a series of sequences, varied forms, and even a photo essay — never yield to giddiness; rather, they are constantly seeking permission, guidance, even role models in nature, which finds ingenious yet almost always circuitous routes toward coupling and what comes after. "Whoever/ thought anyone was just one thing?" Gander asks, a reminder that nothing could be more natural than, if not conflict, then ambivalence, a strong pull from opposite directions. Though hardly without regrets and uncertainties, these are ultimately hopeful poems, attesting to the human capacity for renewal, the willingness to "take hold/ in a pulse of heat,/ in a yes and no,/ for already we can see/ we are no longer what we were." — Craig Morgan Teicher