A faithful existence

About this book

"A Faithful Existence is a lyrical exploration of what it means to be faithful - in the act of translation, in scientific and spiritual inquiry, in friendship, and in poetry. Sensual, erudite, and operatic in scope, these essays pay homage to the landscape of the American South and well beyond - to alligator snapping turtles and anti-particles, to iconoclastic physicists and writers from various countries and epochs, to visionary poets and poetic hoaxes." "Forrest Gander pops the hood of the standard-issue essay and retunes it for the twenty-first century, hotwiring associations and vivid bursts of insight into the quality of immediate experience. Crisscrossing genres, his focus is on perception: how do we see and interpret, what can be compared, how do we understand what we see, and most importantly, how might we connect with what we feel? His precise and unexpected observations on place and people allow his experiences to resonate on a large scale. With him, we discover or rediscover the writing of Araki Yasusada, Thomas Traherne, Pura Lopez Colome, and Henry Dumas, among many others. We remember luminaries such as Agha Shahid Ali, Robert Creeley, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and George Oppen. Engaged in Gander's skillful orchestration - at once delicate and unafraid - we learn a great deal about the work of these masters as well as the environment in which each wrote." "A Faithful Existence intensifies the connections between an ethical vision, a bodily consciousness, and a mode of language that might help us to survive the streams of data, the discombobulating media, and the predatory match of "information" that defines our age. Dialoguing within themselves and among each other, Gander's essays ultimately give this collection a voice all its own."--BOOK JACKET.