Torn Awake

Rating:
Summary: "A New Range of Feeling"
Review: I read quite a bit of contemporary poetry, but this book knocked me out. I had lost myself with enjoyment by the end of the first page, scribbling "Great line!" with my nubbed pencil in the margin. What can I tell you? Forrest Gander is wildly avante garde at times; you may also find him writing sonnet-sequences. Either way, you will read lines that you've never read before; and even when you have no idea what Forrest is talking about on the first read, you'll still know that this is great stuff. Subject matters range from geology to erotic love to some great explorations of father-son relationships.

Each sequence is punctuated by a poem with "Love's Letter" in the title. One of these has a line which goes, "The trace on my lips of her nipples' rouge improves the taste of wine." You could likewise say that, for me, the aftertaste of "Torn Awake" improves the taste of life.

Rating:
Summary: "A New Range of Feeling"
Review: I read quite a bit of contemporary poetry, but this book knocked me out. I had lost myself with enjoyment by the end of the first page, scribbling "Great line!" with my nubbed pencil in the margin. What can I tell you? Forrest Gander is wildly avante garde at times; you may also find him writing sonnet-sequences. Either way, you will read lines that you've never read before; and even when you have no idea what Forrest is talking about on the first read, you'll still know that this is great stuff. Subject matters range from geology to erotic love to some great explorations of father-son relationships.

Each sequence is punctuated by a poem with "Love's Letter" in the title. One of these has a line which goes, "The trace on my lips of her nipples' rouge improves the taste of wine." You could likewise say that, for me, the aftertaste of "Torn Awake" improves the taste of life.

Rating:
Summary: Who Needs Poetry Now
Review: This book un-numbed me. Gander's trademark shifts between lyric and abstraction, between figure and ground create tensions that open the ordinary, the daily numbness which, "torn," gives voice to our exigency. Sure, he has a formidable intelligence, but when the poem suddenly shifts focus from the welter of involved thought to, for instance, a wet dog's face reflected in a hubcap, you feel a vivid, PHYSICAL recognition of the way we negotiate actual experience. That back and forth ballet takes place in each of the book's long poems. Typically, the landscape seems to orient our mode of perception. But clear images retreat as language itself comes to the forefront of our attention. And just when our attention to the EVENT of language begins to falter, we fall through the words again into recognitions of the erotic, the political, our dire and fragile world. In a way, all the poems also involve translation (of Spanish, of geology, of interactions between child and parent, etc.). It's easy to be swept into Gander's orchestrations of rhythmic movements-with an intensifying sense of what? Human presence? Gravitas? I feel summoned toward a sharper intellectual and emotional awareness where I locate an intensified possibility of myself. The title gongs: Torn Awake.

Rating:
Summary: Who Needs Poetry Now
Review: This book un-numbed me. Gander's trademark shifts between lyric and abstraction, between figure and ground create tensions that open the ordinary, the daily numbness which, "torn," gives voice to our exigency. Sure, he has a formidable intelligence, but when the poem suddenly shifts focus from the welter of involved thought to, for instance, a wet dog's face reflected in a hubcap, you feel a vivid, PHYSICAL recognition of the way we negotiate actual experience. That back and forth ballet takes place in each of the book's long poems. Typically, the landscape seems to orient our mode of perception. But clear images retreat as language itself comes to the forefront of our attention. And just when our attention to the EVENT of language begins to falter, we fall through the words again into recognitions of the erotic, the political, our dire and fragile world. In a way, all the poems also involve translation (of Spanish, of geology, of interactions between child and parent, etc.). It's easy to be swept into Gander's orchestrations of rhythmic movements-with an intensifying sense of what? Human presence? Gravitas? I feel summoned toward a sharper intellectual and emotional awareness where I locate an intensified possibility of myself. The title gongs: Torn Awake.