Forrest Gander On Waiting To Publish, Gateway Poems, And C.d. Wright’s Brilliant Work

Lit Hub is excited to characteristic different introduction successful a caller bid from Poets.org: “enjambments,” a monthly question and reply bid pinch caller and established poets. This month, they said to Forrest Gander. Forrest Gander is a writer and translator and nan writer of galore collections, astir recently Mojave Ghost (New Directions, 2024). With Michael Wiegers, he is nan coeditor of The Essential C. D. Wright (Copper Canyon Press, 2025).

A erstwhile Chancellor of nan Academy of American Poets, Gander was nan Briggs-Copeland writer astatine Harvard University and is presently nan Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts and Comparative Literature astatine Brown University.

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Poets.org: How did you and Michael Wiegers determine connected which poems to showcase successful The Essential C. D. Wright?

Forrest Gander: We knocked our heads together. We knew we didn’t want to copy her Selected, truthful we each made a much friendly list, leaning into nan poems that person astir moved us, respectively. Then we compared and talked astir our choices.

We included much recent, unpublished poems. And we added immoderate of her translations—both from Spanish and from French (C.D. was a French major)—that fewer group person ever seen.

Poets.org: What did you study astir this writer that you didn’t cognize earlier compiling this collection?

FG: I already knew, since I lived pinch her for thirty-five years, really uncommonly superb she was. How she could operation joke pinch scorching rage, sensuality pinch dogged ethical conviction. How she refused to repetition herself, really she restlessly explored caller general and tonal possibilities for her poems.

But though her scope is incredible, her themes—love’s tenderness, nan insistent attraction connected justice, an enthusiasm for nan magic of nan word—are changeless from nan commencement to nan extremity of her agelong assemblage of work.

Poets.org: What did you study from curating this measurement that you would for illustration to stock pinch personification trying to people their first collection?

FG: It would beryllium unpopular, but I deliberation I’d say—to my earlier self; to my coming self; to a friend—WAIT! No 1 needs different okay aliases beautiful bully postulation of poems.

Although we whitethorn consciousness nan impulse to people arsenic soon arsenic possible, if we hold past that compulsive urge, curating our book until we’re judge it’s arsenic idiosyncratic and inimitable arsenic immoderate book by C. D. Wright—that’s nan measurement to do it. And for our activity to last.

Poets.org: What was your “gateway” into nan trade of poetry—the poem aliases poesy postulation that made you autumn successful emotion pinch this literate form?

FG: My mother’s sound was nan gateway. When I was a child, she would publication maine poems by Edgar Allen Poe—that hypnotic rhythm—and Carl Sandburg.

Her father, my grandfather, would locomotion astir nan flat reciting aged poems successful English and Swedish. Just listening to him, I memorized nan speech “Spartacus to nan Gladiators astatine Capua,” a (sort of) prose poem by Elijah Kellogg, collected by writer Epes Sargent successful The Primary Standard Speaker, published successful 1857.

Soon I was successful emotion pinch Dylan Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins. But erstwhile I was seventeen, I sewage clasp of The New Naked Poetry, an anthology edited by Stephen Berg and Robert Mezey that included activity by nan Black Mountain poets, nan Beats, and nan New York School. George Oppen, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, and James Wright.

Bong! My life ratcheted backmost and restarted.

Poets.org: If you could brace 1 of nan poems successful The Essential C.D. Wright pinch a activity of art, song, recipe, aliases immoderate different shape of media, which poem would you choose, and pinch what would you brace it?

FG: In a sense, C.D. already made nan prime for me. Long back, successful her brutal, cinematographic poem “Treatment,” C.D. imagines into being Pharoah Sanders arsenic an otherworldly fig of pain-absorbing justice. Righteousness. She doesn’t specify what peculiar creation he’s playing, but I deliberation it would beryllium “Harvest Time” from nan medium Pharoah.

Poets.org: What are you presently reading?

FG: I’m reference a riveting, trippy book, Latitud, by nan Mexican writer Ricardo Cázares, 1 of my favourite modern Mexican poets—his activity very overmuch successful speech pinch U.S. poetry. Also correct present successful beforehand of me, Dong Li’s The Orange Tree.

And Robert Hass’s caller translation, pinch David Frick, of Poet successful nan World, Czesław Miłosz’s poems written betwixt 1946 and 1953.

Poets.org: What are your favourite poems connected Poets.org?

FG: I’m moved to find C.D.’s “Imaginary México,” which transports maine to nan clip erstwhile we lived successful Dolores Hidalgo, and nan excerpts from C.D.’s One pinch Others. But favourite poems displacement around.

I astir often spell to Poets.org to find poems that surface—but only partially—in my mind. I emotion “My Friend Tree” by Lorine Niedecker. I support returning to re-memorize “Psalm” by George Oppen. I look up poems by much surviving poets than dormant poets, but making a database of them would beryllium unwieldy.

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“enjambments,” a monthly question and reply bid produced by nan Academy of American Poets, will item an emerging aliases established writer who has precocious published a poesy collection. Each interview, on pinch poems from nan poet’s caller book, and a reference by nan poet, will beryllium published connected Poets.org and shared successful nan Academy’s play newsletter.