I liked the background and the ideas; and many of the essay portions. The poetry didn't connect for me. ( )

The book is organized as 4 series of three poems/writings. The first of each group is an "Evaporation" poem, lineated, dedicated & lyrical. Intimate. There is always a "she."
The second piece in each series is a photo essay-poem, a collaboration with a photographer & the black & white photos are almost uniformly stellar. These are in various poetic forms. Non specific locations or not AS specific as the locales in the third section of each group. These poems are "revealed always in situation." These poems are built upon repetitions, which create an incantatory, hallucinatory effect. The least effective of these photo/essay pieces is, to my mind, the last, "Lovegreen," with photos by Raymond Meeks. Unlike earlier pieces, this poem seems written to the images, as if the images must precede the words, rather than form in conjunction with them.
Even so, there are word pictures that do not describe photos (there is no boy in the photos)as well as photos that aren't doubled in words (like the jars filled with pond creatures, both innocent play & shadow of lab-filled jars of formaldehyde-preserved amphibians) & we can't see the birds that are purportedly captured on film. They may be in the photos, but we can't find them out.
The third selection in each series is in haibun form, a prose poem (or simply prose) interjected with what appear to be three line haikus (on closer inspection, however, these do not follow the traditional 5, 7, 5 syllabic form, but are of irregular & varying length). These prose pieces are accounts of a poet's journey, specific journeys to specific countries to participate in colloquiums of international poets, & the poet's journey into other cultures and languages through the work of translation. The countries/ cultures visited are those of China, Mexico, Bosnia & Chile. The final journey to Chile, like the preceding photo essay of Part 4, is different than those of the first three sections. Here the poet travels solo. He seems more isolated, less integrated into the foreign place. The poets he is among remain absent: Nicanor Parra doesn't meet with him when he goes to the poet's house & when Parra drives into town to see him, Gander isn't at his hotel. So the meeting is aborted. He visits Neruda's house, but Neruda is dead. The vigil must be constant for the icon to appear, for the icon to accept the invitation. This, unlike earlier journey poems, is about NOT making connection, of feeling the full strangeness of one's outsider situation. Ultimately, however, "at last he's in rhythm with the local" but this integration in the here and now, self in other, feels unstable & contingent. For this moment, but perhaps not for tomorrow.
His estrangement is somewhat mitigated, but in a universal, cosmic rather than particular sense (despite claims of integration in the local). He hasn't really connected with anyone in this place.

The structure of the book recapitulates the breadth & variety of Gander's oeuvre in general. His lyrical, related but stand-alone poems, his extensive work as a translator, especially of Mexican poets, but also his forays into Japanese (winked at so to speak here by use of the tweaked haibun form), & his works of collaboration with photographers. These last works veer toward document & witness. They have a social & ecological component. ( )