Science & Steepleflower is a breakthrough book for Forrest Gander, a poet whose richness of language and undaunted lyric passion land him in traditions running from Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Duncan and Michael Ondaatje. His poetry has been called “desperately beautiful” by Thom Gunn, and “original and fascinating” by John Ashbery. With poems in the leading journals of the day––American Poetry Review, Grand Street, Sulfur, and Conjunctions, to name just a few––Gander plumbs the erotic depths of human interaction with the land. The poems in Science & Steepflower test this relationship with what Publishers Weekly has called “an inbred (and often haunting) spirituality,” bringing us to new vistas of linguistic and perceptive grace.