Deeds of Utmost Kindness

by Forrest Gander

A travelogue that employs diverse settings and styles of poetry.

A haunting and peculiar travelogue, Deeds of the Utmost Kindness employs forms as diverse as haiku and prose poetry in settings that range from Japan to the rural Ozarks to contemporary Moscow. The compelling strangeness of the poems' precise details exposes varied rhythms of thought and illustrated how different logics work in the metaphoric structures of changing places . Yet behind the uneasy sense of dislocation felt by the constant traveler lies the personal, essentially moral, voice of the poet as observer.

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Born in the Mojave Desert, Forrest Gander grew up in Virginia and spent significant periods in San Francisco, Dolores Hidalgo (Mexico), and Eureka Springs, Arkansas before moving to Rhode Island. He holds degrees in literature and in geology, a subject that recurs in his writing and for which his work has been connected to ecological poetics.

Collaboration has been an important engagement for Gander who, over the years, has worked with artists such as Ann Hamilton, Sally Mann, Eiko & Koma, Lucas Foglia, Ashwini Bhat, Richard Hirsch & Michael Rogers. He also translates extensively and has edited several anthologies of contemporary poetry from Latin America, Spain, and Japan.

He writes across the genres. A recent project with the Chilean poet Raul Zurita is Pinholes in the Night Essential Poems from Latin America. Other titles by Gander include The Trace, a novel set on the border with Mexico; Fungus Skull Eye Wing Selected Poems of Alfonso D'Aquino, translations; and Redstart an Ecological Poetics, essays and poems written with John Kinsella. Gander's 2011 book of poems, Core Samples from the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Reviews

[Kelsey Hennegen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite lines:
"The years will scab over, / impossible not to pick at them" from "ozarks"

"When for no reason a pain snubs itself out / in my chest, and I think of my death, / I think / of this moment, / how the wind is soft as skin" and "It is impossible to believe / in what goes on without me, that sky / does not draw shut / in my leaving." from "hand held shot with mirror"

"Where it is possible to remark / on the sudden appearance / of the commonplace, fireflies. / Where we find ourselves / changing everything / around us. Where one of love's forms / is fascination / before and at the end of language" from "red shirt"

"As if to say, Here / Is the world. You / Do not even know / How violently you are involved" from "Repeating Dream"

And so many of the isolated glimpses contained in "The Second Presence." The poem "The Provinces of Saturn"

[kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

"pyrite

I bet you are judging this poem already. "