Let me tell you something about meditation. At the absolute center, is the vortex we are spun from like clay,
there is a shaping hand which is neither Godlike nor peaceful as you imagine.
― Forrest Gander, Torn Awake
With so many car bombs exploding here in Lebanon, everyone’s finding their own ways to cope. Some are drinking or doing drugs, others are exercising or just hiding away. In the wake of this evening’s bombing near Beirut, I’m choosing to turn to poetry–to the words and works of Forrest Gander.
Since I’ve always admired Forrest for being (in person) a man of few words (he was my chair while I was studying and teaching creative writing at Brown), I won’t write much to introduce his poetry–which speaks for itself. I’ve long found his bold blending of mediums and geographies an inspiration. For example, his book Core Samples for the World–a 2012 finalist for the Pultizer Prize–weaves together poetry, photography, and haibun (a Japanese form of essay-poem) to explore “foreign” relations of all kinds–from China to Chile. If you live in New England, you can hear him read his poems in person at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in May.
My fondest memories of Forrest are from the poetry readings we used to have at his home, which rests in the middle of a cemetery–a fitting setting for a geologist and Egyptologist to play with words and meditate on meaning…
I have lost the consolation of faith
though not the ambition to worship.
― Forrest Gander
