Anthony Conty asked Forrest Gander:

I just finished "Be With" yesterday and wrote a file worth of quotes from the poems. “Despostions of carnage, catches of light. Our legacy mission. A carcass of the unspoken aullando”. How do you relate to so many opinions coming out about the border from those who have obviously been there? I am a middle school Spanish teacher and finds the cultural parts interesting.

Forrest Gander Hi Anthony. Not quite sure what you mean-- opinions from people who have been there. I've spent a lot of time there, myself, and I translate a lot of Mexican writers. I just wanted to write about how the landscape holds the history of the people (and birds and animals) that have crossed it. A traumatic history in an unforgiving desert. I don't know if you were thinking about the differing opinions about immigration across the border. That's a way bigger subject than this forum makes space for.

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In "Then Come Back," your new translation of Pablo Neruda's "lost poems," you say, "There's a love poem that turned my solar plexus into a cavern." I'm guessing it might be number 4 for its complexity and surrealism. Which one did you have in mind?

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In "Then Come Back," your new translation of Pablo Neruda's "lost poems," you say, "There's a love poem that turned my solar plexus into a cavern." I'm guessing it might be number 4 for its complexity and surrealism. Which one did you have in mind?

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