Rush to the Lake
"In his first book of poems, Gander writes of the everyday (walking,
kicking a can) and the exotic (Japanese sumo wrestlers) in a fresh and
exacting style that seems to embody a way of thinking often uplifting,
yet heavy with a darker vision as well. The poems pose interesting polarities-
between East and West, sexuality and asceticism, the pushes and pulls
of life and language"
-Library Journal
"Gander writes a cool, detached poetry, never confessional and autobiographical....
There's a toughness, a hard edge of danger on the margins of these poems.
Gander has a startling way of yoking beauty and violence"
-Eliot Krieger, The Providence Sunday Journal
"Forrest Gander's Rush to the Lake is cryptic and mysterious
. . . . His poems often cross over into myth, tale or parable, or uncover
a sense of archetype in a situation. Gander doesn't stand under the umbrellas
of any particular post-modern theories about poetry. His approach is to
find what no one else possibly could know about his subject - and that
approach guarantees an original voice."
-Frances Mayes, San Jose Mercury News