Twice Alive

"In the searing ecological and love poems of his new collection, Twice Alive, Pulitzer Prize winner Forrest Gander addresses the exigencies of our historical moment and the intimacies, personal and environmental, that bind us to others and to the world. Drawing from his training in geology and on the tradition of Sangam literature, Gander invests these poems with an emotional intensity that illumines our deep-tangled interrelations. While conducting fieldwork with a celebrated mycologist, Gander links human intimacy with the transformative collaborations between species that compose lichens. His poems ask us provocative questions: Do we live twice? Can we really merge with others? Twice Alive combines what one critic (Alan Golding) calls "the most searing love poems of the 21st century" with poems centered on the environment. Gander addresses personal and ecological trauma- several poems focus on the devastation wrought by wildfires in California where he lives-but his tone is overwhelmingly celebratory. Twice Alive is a book charged with exultation and tenderness"--