Author Description

Bringing together four decades of her writing, "Gail Sher Poetry & Poetics, 1980-2020," is an impressive testament to Gail Sher's ongoing engagement with poetry as a practice of attention. It also emphatically reinforces her contributions to, on the one hand, a long tradition of American writing, especially from the West Coast, that is steeped in East Asian philosophy and poetic forms, and, on the other, an equally rich history of experimental writing by women. --From the Preface by James Maynard, Curator, The Poetry Collection, University at Buffalo When I found Gail Sher's books, I imagined her having stepped from a Japanese Noh play. Her poems, sharpened by rigorous Buddhist discipline, grabbed me instantly. They were tough, refreshingly hard-edged, full of the natural world--constructed of bits and pieces of mineral, insect, bark, summer grass. They could cry out from the page in several languages at once, with English functioning (I thought) like a piece of steel to strike the spark. They felt classical. Despite their wild turns of phrasing, fox barks & cricket clicks, under the surface they showed a sensibility that was refined, educated, attentive to natural detail, and enamored of the chipped, the asymmetric, the rustic. They put me in mind of the writers of Japan's Heian court, the best of whom were women. I still hear echoes of Murasaki Shikibu or Ono no Komachi when I open Gail's books. -- Andrew Schelling, Naropa University