Mojave Ghost

In his sonorous new collection, Pulitzer Prize winner Gander (Be With) captures his walk along parts of the 800-mile San Andreas Fault, ending at his Mojave desert birthplace. It’s a journey fraught with recall, launched after the deaths of his wife, poet C.D. Wright (“marriage, a divination of resonant relations”) and his mother (“I borrowed my brightness from her. Where is it now?”). If this collection shows how place and memory coalesce, it’s also concerned with how we see ourselves. “My childhood self asks again, / What have you done with your life?” muses Gander, and throughout he regrets a loss of impetuous joy (“the inward flare / of exhilaration”) and a tendency to overthink rather than experience (“But I was a jukebox. What came out of me was just / what other people wanted to hear”). Trained as a geologist, Gander converses not only with his past but all past, seeking to locate himself in deep geologic history as he notes the “pale fossils … after the rain” and “rock-flavored afternoon heat.” In the end, he continues to ask questions as he heads down the canyon into life.