PJAS 19-13
Julia Fiedorczuk
Twice Alive: Lessons in Intimacy
Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 19 (2025), pp. 181-189
Abstract: Forrest Gander, famously described by Robert Hass as “ a restlessly experimental writer,” has consistently developed a unique poetics of listening, tuning into the complex reality of Anthropocene with its multiple, interconnected crises. Gander’s postmodern lyric addresses the entanglements of personal and political, human and more-than-human, material and spiritual, mammalian and geological through forms that take inspiration from Anglo-American modernist tradition as well as non-western (e. g. south-Asian) literatures. The article focuses on Gander’s 2021 collection, Twice Alive. Growing out of a collaboration with a mycologist (Anne Pringle), the poems tell the story of human and more-than-human intimacy unfolding within four types of California landscape (sea, forest, desert and wasteland). These settings correspond to the types of landscape used by the Bengali poetic tradition known as the Sangam. Gander’s multi-layered work is read as an attempt to recreate a complex set of relationships between various actors and phenomena that make us who we are.
Keywords: Forrest Gander, poetics, ecopoetics, Anthropocene, intimacy, experiment
DOI: 10.7311/PJAS.19/2025.13