Gander's poetry weaves seamlessly through mysterious and esoteric topics. From the Japanese influence in his first collection, "Rush to the Lake," to his latest book, "Science and Steeplechase," Gander refuses to let words fade into paltry images or cliched answers. Instead, he highlights the complex intricacies of ordinary lives. Without exchanging multiculturalism for style or letting form override content, Gander still appeals to the diligent, careful, playful reader who is not scared of sometimes referring to a dictionary, or even a manual on verse.
His poems are only as intense and complicated as life, or as one chooses to make life. Missing one detail, one carefully selected word (or, conversely, overestimating the importance of a symbol or sequence) can mean the difference in understanding or missing the entire meaning of the poem. The ubiquitous confidence on the part of the narrator, who we can only assume is, at times, a sly manifestation of Gander, increases our desire to ferret out exactly what he is trying to say; the "he seems to get it, why don't I?" refrain echoes through your head for most of the poems, prompting deeper and closer engagment with the material.
The most ordinary subjects appear in jagged, lurid flashes, as if captured by the light of a strobe, and, at other times, the strangest locales are transformed into nothing odder than a neighbor's backyard. The Japan we are invited to examine in his early collection eerily resembles a dreamy landscape or surreal film, not an actual locale in the slightest, while the American South takes on tones of papery dryness, sepia-colored yet with additional tints of startling red and yellow. As Gander writes in his poem "Knife on a Plate": "the audacious / originality of the ordinary / sometimes suggests an opening," an opening indeed for some sharply humorous comments on modern life, as well as pure, unsentimental sentiment.
In addition to receiving the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative North American Writing and the Whiting Award, Gander also writes critical essays for The Nation and Boston Review.