Core Samples from the World

A gorgeous, wide-ranging volume of poetry and essays by Forrest Gander, studded with the work of three great photographers.

Forrest Gander’s Core Samples from the World is a magnificent compendium of poetry, photography, and essay (a form of Japanese haibun). Collaborating with three acclaimed photographers, Gander explores tensions between the familiar and foreign. His eloquent new work voices an ethical concern for others, exploring empathic relations in which the world itself is fundamental. Taking us around the globe to China, Mexico, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Chile, Core Samples shows how Gander’s “sharp sense of place has made him the most earthly of our avant-garde, the best geographer of fleshly sites since Olson” (Donald Revell, The Colorado Review). 20 black-and-white photographs

Forrest Gander (b. 1956) was born in the Mojave Desert and grew up, for the most part, in Virginia. With degrees in geology and English literature, Gander is the author of numerous books of poetry, translation, fiction, and essays. Formerly A.K. Seaver Professor of Literary Arts and Comparative Literature at Brown University, Gander has been the recipient of grants from the NEA, the Guggenheim, Howard, Witter Bynner, and Whiting Foundations. His 2019 collection Be With won the Pulitzer prize for poetry and was longlisted for the National Book Award.