Immigrant Sea

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was born in California’s Mojave Desert, grew up in Virginia, and attended the College of William & Mary, where he majored in geology. After earning an MA in literature from San Francisco State University, Gander moved to Mexico, then to Arkansas, where his poetry – informed by his knowledge of geology – turned its attention to the landscape as foreground or source of action.

Gander’s books of poetry include “Be With” (2018), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, “Eye Against Eye” (2005), “Torn Awake” (2001) and “Science & Steepleflower” (1998).

Though primarily a poet, Gander is also a translator, novelist, essayist, and the editor of poetry anthologies. He has translated collections by the Mexican poets Pura López Colomé and Coral Bracho. With Kent Johnson he translated Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz’s “Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jamie Saenz” (2002) and “The Night” (2007), for which he won a PEN Translation Award. His translations of Neruda are collected in “Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems” (2016) and included in “The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems” (2004). He also edited the bilingual anthology “Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women” (1993). Gander’s own poetry has been translated into several languages. He has published two novels, “As a Friend” (2008) and “The Trace” (2014).

Aroused by her inaccessibility, he aches for more
of her life to live inside him. Watching

the breakers, standing so close he can feel
heat coming off her wet scalp. What is

his relation to this person
before him, so familiar and foreign? The way

he searches out her face, he searches out himself. Gusts
thrash crests of swell, spring grasses twirl

circles in the sand where they stand without speaking. She
wants him to know it’s all charged, even grass

positive, pollen negative, so when grass waves,
it sweeps the air for pollen. He feels electricity all around

as though the wild drama of the coming storm were already
aware of them, foreigners on this shore. Little

sapphire-blue flowers speckle the dunes.
He wonders if he has let himself flatten out

into a depthless sheet, like escalator stairs, whether in the end
he’ll disappear underground without the smallest lurch

of resistance. But when her lavish face turns toward him
beaming, the corners of her eyes wind-wet,

he yields to that excess, he reappears to himself.

Read an introduction to this poem.

Forrest Gander:

was born in California’s Mojave Desert, grew up in Virginia, and attended the College of William & Mary, where he majored in geology. After earning an MA in literature from San Francisco State University, Gander moved to Mexico, then to Arkansas, where his poetry – informed by his knowledge of geology – turned its attention to the landscape as foreground or source of action.

Gander’s books of poetry include “Be With” (2018), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, “Eye Against Eye” (2005), “Torn Awake” (2001) and “Science & Steepleflower” (1998).

Though primarily a poet, Gander is also a translator, novelist, essayist, and the editor of poetry anthologies. He has translated collections by the Mexican poets Pura López Colomé and Coral Bracho. With Kent Johnson he translated Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz’s “Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jamie Saenz” (2002) and “The Night” (2007), for which he won a PEN Translation Award. His translations of Neruda are collected in “Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems” (2016) and included in “The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems” (2004). He also edited the bilingual anthology “Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women” (1993). Gander’s own poetry has been translated into several languages. He has published two novels, “As a Friend” (2008) and “The Trace” (2014).

Publish date: 20.05.2019

Also read:

Julia Fiedorczuk:

a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.

Gander’s artful, formally innovative poetry often concerns perception; what happens when one is looking, listening, touching or otherwise sensing the world. “Immigrant Sea” might perhaps be read as a phenomenological description of an encounter by the sea, an encounter which is itself like the sea in that recognition – of the other and of oneself – pulsates like the waves as the experience oscillates between familiarity and strangeness.

The poem opens with a description of longing. An anonymous “he”, the protagonist of the poem, contemplates the mystery of another human being’s presence. An anonymous “she” is standing right next to him, but in her separate being she is infinitely distant. He would like to reduce the distance, so that more of her life might live inside him. He yearns for their separate selves to mingle. She is close – in space – but inaccessible otherwise than through a longing so powerful it causes his self to flow and ebb – like the sea.

Also read:

An Introduction to Forrest Gander’s “Immigrant Sea”

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