Dear Forrest Gander 2021

Dear Forrest Gander,

My name is Ally, and I’m from Lab Middle School in NYC, NY. After reading your poem “Wasteland: On the California Wildfires”, I’ve extended my knowledge on perspectives.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to acquire the mindset of something that isn’t human. Your poem reminds me of a book I read as it also takes on this. In 4th grade, my brother introduced me to a series of books he’s been reading in school. It was called Warriors. This fictional series was full of adventures on feral cats. Throughout the series, the readers see the world from a cat’s perspective. At first, I wasn’t interested and needed some convincing. Until one day, I saw multiple kids (older than me) reading them at the local library. So I took the first book in the series and gave it a try. I remember flipping the first few pages only to find myself confused. Different clans for cats? Fighting over what? The more I turned, the more questions I had. At the same time, my understanding grew.

In “Wasteland: On the California Wildfires”, the poem is told through the perspective of a wildfire. I didn’t realize it at first until I read more of it. One line I found interesting was “I came for you, churning, turning / the present into purgatory.” The wildfire is turning the present into suffering. For a human, this might be devastating, but a wildfire might not feel the same way. Wildfires are known for causing a lot of destruction. In this line, I would like to ask what the “you” is in this? Is it human? The line later continues, “Because / it must be / leavened with remorse / for the feeling to rise.” What is this feeling? Distress?

By showing the readers the view of something else, we can learn more about those in our environment. People often can’t understand one’s feelings and only think about their own. Being able to put yourself in one's shoes might help you understand people better. When I was little, I was often frustrated when I didn't get my way. Being able to see someone else's perspective makes me want to reflect on my actions again until they're justifiable. After gaining a new perspective, my empathy towards others developed. This empathy will later be helpful in life. Empathy can make a person more approachable because you can understand the circumstances of another person. This allows another person to feel safe and welcomed around you. A person’s empathy towards others can help them respond to certain situations appropriately. By switching perspectives with someone else, can give us some information about their world. However, there are still sometimes in my life, when I feel right because I am me. These times aren't completely bad, but they should be limited.

Thank you for sharing your poem. It was very interesting reading from a wildfire’s perspective. Your poem helped me find my way through these times as it reminds me to be more considerate towards others.

Sincerely,

Ally 

Dear Forrest Gander,

I’m Jake, a ninth grade student from Milwaukee. Your poem, “Wasteland: on the California Wildfires” stood out to me. Recently I moved from Las Vegas, and your poem resonated with me because when we drove to California we could always see the charred grounds on the sides of the highway where the fire once burned. I liked your style of writing and how the way the words were positioned on the page, I liked how my eyes jumped from line to line.

I liked the poem not only because of the imagery, but also because of the literary devices you used. Here in Wisconsin, recently there was a National Weather warning for forest fires because it was so dry, now that everything is turning green here it reminds me of the burned scenery in California and how lucky we are here.

When you talk about the larvae that lived in the trees I think about all the wildlife that lives here and how a fire would devastate the ecosystem. It also makes me think about all the other animals that lived in the areas affected. When you talk about the smoke, heat, flames, and wind, I remember how in Las Vegas while the fires were at their worst, we could see the smoke in the air all the way from home, and how it stayed in the sky for days blocking the sunlight. Because the words are scattered across the page, I think of it as how quickly fire spreads, and how fire will spread anywhere it goes. I feel like you wrote this to talk about how nature needs tragedy to show its true beauty once the area grows back. Although the area is devastated and looks bad currently, when the area recovers it will be thriving and be stronger than before. I hope that the area recovers quickly, and that every living being’s life there will go back to normal.

What is the reason you wrote the poem with that specific style, that makes your eyes jump from line to line. Do you live in an area that the fires affected directly, or did you have other inspiration for writing about the issue, if so what was it?

Considering I love being in nature, and this poem talks about nature’s beauty I really enjoyed reading it. Especially because I experienced and saw some of the consequences. Overall poetry has connected with many of my interests throughout my life, and I believe that is why I enjoy reading new poems whenever I get the chance.

Sincerely,

Jake

Dear Forrest Gander,

My name is Aurélia, and I’m currently a sophomore at Arlington High School. My English teacher is Ms. Bessette. I was looking for a poem to write about for our school assignment and when I came across yours I found it very interesting. I’ve never been to California or seen a wildfire in real life before, only pictures online, so I thought that your poem would help me understand what it’s like. At first your poem was like the calm before the storm, bugs jumping around and dry leaves, but then it changed drastically. The reader seems to look down below and see this massive tornado of flame, and the tornado is you, ravaging everything. I’m curious about why you write as if you’re the tornado. Is it a representation of how humans have been ravaging nature, turning the present state of nature into a treeless purgatory? Is it a more personal experience you’ve had that made you write about the fire like that? The way the tornado made it seem almost like a dance, - “extemporizing my own extreme weather”, “spinning it outward” - like a beautiful yet savage destruction of wildlife.

You start your poem by saying that the “green spring grass on the hills had cured”. The grass then immediately dries up again a month after. Had the grass needed to cure itself due to a previous fire? This makes me wonder if all the work that the grass did was useless, since it dried up right after. The larvae are shedding “boring dust”, but the dust doesn’t seem so boring to me. It “tinkled as it dropped onto dead leaves”, and that sound seems really interesting. I tried to look up a video, but instead was met with disgusting images of larvae being removed from people’s heads, which made me all the more curious to hear what this soft tinkling sounds like. When I first read that, I thought of wind chimes in the breeze, slowly tinkling in the distance.

I’m also curious why you chose that specific layout for your poem. It looks like a braid to me, but given the content of the poem I’d guess it’s meant to be a tornado swaying from side to side. Was the resemblance with a braid purposeful?

Finally, I found this poem interesting because it doesn’t seem to glorify nature like so many other poems do. In this poem, nature is dry, infested with insects, and destructive. It really felt like a warning to me, a message that if we keep drying up the planet, these events like the wild tornado will be more and more common, and I completely agree.

Sincerely,

Aurélia

Dear Mr. Gander,

My name is Peter and I am a junior at Edina High School. When I first received this assignment for my AP English Literature class, I was quite annoyed. I have never been a huge fan of poetry- I’m more of a math and science type of person- as it always seems to require reading between the lines and there were never clear answers to any of my questions. Even worse, for this assignment, I would not only have to analyze multiple poems, but I would also have to research and find the poems themselves before I could even begin to analyze them. My expectations were low; I procrastinated getting started. However, when I finally got moving on the project and stumbled across your poem, my mind went through a series of important revelations.

You see, Mr. Gander, throughout my years as a student in English classes, I have been exposed to a decent amount of poetry. We would always have poetry units that I would begrudgingly participate in. However, the key to my frustration, I realized, was that I was looking for the “correct” answers to analysis questions. I would be worried that I was reading the poem wrong, that the person next to me would get different answers, or that I would get a bad grade if I got something different than my teacher. So when I began this assignment, where there were no guidelines to analysis, my classmates were reading different poems, and the graded portion of the assignment was still a long ways away, I felt a new sense of freedom and enjoyment. When I read your poem “Wasteland: on the California Wildfires,” I felt a connection to the words more than I ever had before. I’ve always been a huge fan of the outdoors and spend most of my summers on canoeing or hiking trips around the Midwest and Canada. So not only was I free of the burden of grades and correctness, I engaged with the subject and actually wanted to hear what you had to say. It was a strange new feeling for me. This sense of desire spurred me forward: I read your poems “Lava” and “Moon,” where the keys of poetry continued to reveal themselves. Particularly with “Moon,” which consists of only one word, I realized that there could not possibly be a correct interpretation of it. It purely is a prompt to the reader to spur thought within them. So, Mr. Gander, I would like to tell you about what “Wasteland” brought out of me, as well as the questions it gave me.

After reading “Wasteland: on the California Wildfires,” I believe that you were prompting thought about three ideas. First, and most obviously, the wildfires of California are just one example, of many, of humanity’s impact on the environment. Climate change, habitat loss, extinction, pollution, the list could go on and on. Words like “crackled” (5), “desiccated” (6), “scorched” (31), and “purgatory” (39) all create images of the tremendous blazes descending upon the innocent forests. Like I said before, I deeply care about the environment for personal enjoyment and experience, but I also know that on a larger scale our current path of consumption as a planet is leading us to our collective demise. I know that you are also involved with nature and environmental causes, as you hold a degree in geology and co-authored Redstart: An Ecological Poetics with John Kinsella. This led me to wonder how you balance your other interests with your professional occupation at Brown University. At this point in my life, I’m planning on entering STEM classes and occupations as opposed to the arts, but I wouldn’t rule out the idea of writing on the side. Do you only write when inspiration strikes, or do you set quotas or goals for yourself? Do you still work at all in the geological or natural fields? Has your work in environmental and scientific areas inspired some of your other poems? I’m curious to hear more about the other parts of your life and how they relate to and balance with your poetry.

A second idea that I thought about while reading “Wasteland” is the positives of the fires. I think that many people immediately assume that the fires lay complete waste to the forests, preventing any growth or life from returning. And it can definitely appear that way on the surface. However, in my experience and with research, I know that notion to be false, and I believe you do as well. Fires are a natural part of the life cycle of the forest, clearing out the old, tall trees and making room for new growth. Furthermore, some trees’ seeds only spread during fires, such as the lodgepole pine. Controlled burns are a common tool of the US Forest Service and ultimately can be an integral tool for nature. I see your agreement with this idea through a shifting tone between stanzas, such as when you said “the hills had cured” (2) as well as the overall shape of the poem with the stanzas shifting from the left to the right of the page. I found the use of “cured” very clever. Obviously, it is describing the hills and nature as burnt and cooked, but the word nonetheless carries the positive connotations of a disease cure or the like. Additionally, the shifting of the stanzas from the left to the right and back again as the poem progresses illustrates to me this duality. On the one hand, we have the terrible human-caused destruction of an ancient ecosystem, but on the other, this destruction paves the way for new life to prosper. This leads me to my next question which relates more to poetry techniques. In your extensive experience, do you think that the shape of a poem can hold as much value as the words? In mine, I’ve come to think that shape can only offer small ideas or emphasis and mostly relies on words to add detail. But I’m interested to know your opinion.

Finally, the third thought that came to me while reading your poem was the duty that humans have to right our wrongs. Your use of enjambment throughout the majority of the poem, which creates flow and continuity, signals to me the idea that these problems and tragedies will be a constant and last forever into the future if we don’t make changes to our lives. Furthering this message is the line “turn / everything to tragedy / before I can see it” (40-42). This hit a chord with me as I think it perfectly captures a serious issue climate activists face. Right after a large natural disaster or other issue arises, public support for environmental protection surges. But in times when everything seems to be fine, when problems are merely brewing under the surface, support is hard to come by. We, as a species, cannot expect to solve this issue that threatens our survival by merely reacting as issues arise. We must proactively fight the problems if we expect to make any progress. That leads me to my final question. Do you believe that poetry can be used as a political or social voice? In my experience it seems as if it always takes a backburner to more prominent communication methods like novels or television. But at least for me, your poem changed that. It became a call to action like I hadn’t seen out of poetry before. I’m wondering if you believe it can affect others like it did to me.

Mr. Gander, I want to finish by thanking you. Thank you for changing my views on poetry from negative to positive, thank you for bringing attention to such an important issue, and thank you for looking at all sides of the problem and making educated statements about it, even with so few words. I hope you continue to write and impact others as you have done with me.

Sincerely,

Peter 

Dear Forrest Gander,

While reading your poem “Wasteland: on the California Wildfires,” I felt as if I was part of the spectacle, the stanzas trickling down just as the frass did as it “dropped onto the dead leaves, below”. The alignment of the words, as a matter of fact, was my favorite part of the poem. It gave the words a sense of unrestraint so that one could interpret the structure in many different ways. As the aforementioned frass, as stairs leading down into purgatory just as what became of the landscape overtaken by inferno, or simply as diverse structure meant to give the poem a sort of melody.

Another part of what I loved about this poem is how the lyrical arrangement brings out the magical imagery of the wasteland and turns the dead landscape into a living, ethereal entity. The tragic fires become conscious and more alive than ever, eager to cauterize the land - to purge it of infestation and the hills of withered grass. I pictured it as an angry sprite set on consuming all that it could, and it reminded me of Calcifer the Fire Demon from Howl’s Moving Castle. Stronger even than my appreciation for the fire imagery, was with the line:

You

could hear it twenty

feet away, tinkling.

To turn something as mundane as insect excrement falling onto leaves into something that provoked the mental image of sparkling glitter or glass beads was truly fascinating. I could almost hear a sound that I’ve never heard before.

While reading the poem, a couple questions came to mind. First about the intention of the stanza structure; was it meant to represent one thing, or was it purposefully left unclear and open to interpretation? To me, the structure was the most important part of the poem and is what set it apart from other poems that I’ve read, complimenting the imagery beautifully and pulling the reader in. Another question I had was how you pictured the inferno while writing the poem. Was it spirit-like, or hellish, or something completely different? The inferno speaking in first person had me wondering how you pictured it, or them.

Thank you for writing such an attractive poem that had me coming back asking myself if I had missed anything, and always finding that new detail I didn’t know I was looking for.

Sincerely,

Stewart

Dear Forest Gander,

I recently read your poem “Wasteland: on the California WildFires,” and found it exceptionally intriguing. I admired the themes you included about nature that bring attention to the situation in California.

I enjoyed the imagery that appeared in your poem because it provided me with images that I could play in my mind. I interpreted the breaks between the stanzas as a staircase that stepped from a beautiful landscape to a scene of a scorched wasteland.

The description in your scenes reminded me of the village in India I used to live in called Chennapur, which is just outside of Warangal. The feel of the loose dry soil, the frosty damp air hitting my face in the mornings, and the sight of fresh dew running down on the side of the mossed cobblestone wells. The poem took me on a metaphysical passage through my memories.

The reason I was so drawn to your poem was because of the way you incorporated messages about nature in your work. I would call myself passionate about it, as I tend to spend as much of my time outdoors exploring new scenery and landscapes. Such as mountain tops, and deep oak forests where the light ever so lightly peers through the trees.

While reading this poem I had some questions that I would love for you to answer. Did any music or art inspire you? I found many similarities between this poem and the song “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson. I feel like the themes and the messages of the song are very similar to your poem. It features the lyrics “What have we done to the world?, Look what we've done,” and “Where did we go wrong? Someone tell me why.” He describes all the wrongs humanity has done to our planet which reminded me of your work.

Another question I have is how did your passion for nature develop? What inspired you to write poetry on this subject? What do you hope to accomplish through your writing?

Anyway, thank you for your time, I really enjoyed reading your work and I hope you continue writing inspirational pieces.

Sincerely,

Vineeth 

Dear Forrest Gander,

My friends all call me a pyromaniac. Jokingly, of course. You won’t ever find me setting the school or the local Italian grocery on fire, but I’m always the one to breathe life into the bonfires we burn marshmallows over, the kind of fire that feels like a warm summer night.

There's something about the way an open flame dances. How it is so fundamentally a messenger of destruction, yet can still find a way to fertilize the vibrancy of life. Native Americans used fire to carefully cultivate the diverse biological paradise that is Yosemitie: to clear underbrush and encourage herbage for wildlife, to open pasture lands and support the growth of native crops. Fire was a central part of their culture, their greatest tool. Fire helped them, and my bonfires saved me.

I think your poem stood out to me because of the metaphor, that is, besides the fact that it is about fire. The California wildfires were a calamity. A far cry from the beauty of the Native American’s controlled burns, they ravaged the landscape, leaving a trail of death and heavy ash. Yet, when the poem sees the moon rise over Sugarloaf Ridge, “like a girl doing cartwheels'' there's an eerie beauty in the image of a wasteland. You say “No one goes on living/the life that isn’t there” but what is life if not perseverance? When buried seeds and wildflower sprouts push through the ruined forest floor are they not the purest form of life? The determined will to go on living simply because they must. Life is everywhere.

Unlike the smallest wildflowers who cling so desperately to life, we as humans are swirling parasitic infernos. You write, “I need to turn/everything to tragedy before/I can see it, because/it must be/leavened with remorse/for the feeling to rise.” That pursuit of feeling is fundamentally human; it is both our strongest point, and will someday turn to our inevitable downfall. We are far too complex for our own good. Do you think hope itself should be enough to drive the movement in this world? I do. We should all aspire to be more like weeds and wildflowers. Striving to live onward ourselves, to build the many wastelands of this world back up instead of creating more.

Thank you for making me think, and for writing about fire.

Evelyn

Dear Mr. Forrest Gander,

My name is Madison, and I am a junior in high school at Roland Park Country School.

I selected your poem because the title, Wasteland: on the California Wildfires. Your title stuck out to me, because most of my family lives on the west coast in Los Angeles and they were affected by the fires. They experienced the smoky skies and the ash raining down upon their city. Also, climate change is very important, which made me more drawn to listening to your poem.

After listening to your poem, it did not disappoint. I was intrigued by the free verse structure with the stanzas placed separate and diagonal to each other. Did you do this to represent the burning of the trees and how there are only a few left surviving? Did you do it to represent how it has isolated people and animals from each other? Does it represent how fast the fire spreads by looking left and right constantly while reading the poem?

I noticed how you used words such as "gone", "desiccated", "dead", "scorched", and "purgatory". These words encompass the harshness of the sudden, deadly wildfires. The repetition of these harsh words really make the reader feel the pain that the fires cause toward the environment and towards humanity. Next, the use of the metaphor “the full moon showed up like a girl doing cartwheels” made me stop and think. At first, I was confused by what this meant, but I am interpreting it as a girl doing cartwheels represents the carefree and relaxed feeling of the memories of childhood. Although you can never go back in time, the past memories bring you comfort and care. This is compared to the moon because it comes and goes everyday, but it brings comfort and relief knowing it is always there or will rise, even in tragedy. So, especially when it rises in full, it shows there is still hope.

Overall, I want to thank you for writing this beautiful poem. The use of figurative language makes it more symbolic and the message it portrays is an important one.

Sincerely,

Madison