This was a bit of a mediocre collection for me. None of the poems really stand out, and I don't think I'll remember any of it in a year's time. I wasn't fond of the way a lot of the poems' lines were broken up because it cut off the flow, but I did like the mixing of English and Spanish throughout the collection. Full review to follow. ( )

A wonderful award winning collection of poetry. It is great from start to finish. A couple I really loved were "Ruth" and "Madonna del Parto" . Madonna is a short work that paints a beautiful visual image of a waterfall and its surroundings. Ruth is a homage to the author's mother in her waning years and tugs at the heart. I really loved the collection and can see why it received all the acclaim that it has. Loved it. ( )

Poetry can be blunt and come right at you, or, at other times, a poet can say so much by what isn't stated word by word. I am new to Forrest Gander, but I was richly rewarded for dipping my eyes into these poems. The syntax is varied and quite clever at times, one doesn't simply plod along line after line. A poem might curve down the page with outliers off to the side, or lines might hold a first few words that are split off by a space from the line's completion, or there might be a page full of single line stanzas, or a poem may go on for pages that are made up of short stanzas that dot a page here and there. All the styles work in their own way and offer up words that connect.
My one negative note would have to do with the last section of the book titled "Littoral Zone." In those pages, six poems each face and concern a photo on the opposite page. To each poem, my connection was nil, even after several readings ... maybe another time.
Throughout the book the variety of form was as agile as the language used to express the message. Many times I am a lazy reader of poetry, I don't want to have to work too hard to find the meaning, and obscure references seem tiresome and I leave them obscure and undiscovered. These poems need and deserve attention. You don't need a reference source for ancient gods, or need to know the life histories of famous poets, you just owe it to yourself to pay attention to what is both said and unsaid, by what is spelled out in solid words, and what is just peeking out from behind a phrase here or there.
Grief runs through many of the poems, as the poet has lost not only his mother, but also his partner of thirty years, the poet C.D. Wright in 2016. Wright died unexpectedly in her sleep, which throws a horrid scenario of discovery into my mind. My sensitivity to grief is still very high from losing my own partner of thirty years six months ago. I see shadows of that pain quickly in these poems. A poet uses words in so many different ways to make us share a feeling, a raw emotion, a longing for a person, or a time, or both. I was deeply touched by some of these poems. When a complete stranger's words can reach off the page and touch your heart so intimately and so intensely, it's a thing of beauty. ( )

This is another selection from the NBA longlist for poetry. The poems about him caring for his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, are emotional and touching. Other poems in the collection looking at the natural world are more cerebral. He focuses on the area near the US/Mexico border and uses imagery effectively to capture time and place. ( )