Sailing through Cassiopeia

Dan Gerber

Dan Gerber’s eighth collection of poetry, Sailing through Cassiopeia, richly layers and evokes the elegance of the commonplace with meditations on how to love a world that is beautiful but also monstrous. Though his work is illuminated by a range of masters—from those of the Chinese canon to Rainer Maria Rilke and Wallace Stevens—Gerber’s voice is entirely his own. With a profound sense of history, philosophy, and poetics, he honors an immediate yet ever-changing world and its endangered landscapes.

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ISBN: 9781556594083

Format: Paperback

Talking Under the Moon

How many other girls

did I talk about under the moon?

 

A mild October night with frogs,

two nights to the full and too few stars.

 

We talked out under the trees.

We talked in cars.

 

We talked our way through making love,

then talked through getting dressed,

 

talked how hard it is to say goodbye,

how if we met again like this

 

we might grow tired and wear each other out,

talked more,

 

and more, I don’t remember,

while the moon grew dim behind a cloud.

 

And then it was December.

About the Author

Dan Gerber is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, essays, and memoir. He has received the Society of Midland Authors Award, The Mark Twain Award, the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year award in poetry, a Michigan Notable Book Award, the Michigan Author Award, and inclusion in The Best American Poetry, and American Life in Poetry.

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Reviews

“In Sailing through Cassiopeia Gerber’s decades of apprenticeship are palpable in a book so stunning—so tenderly branching into the world even as it tunnels inward—that it is difficult to put down.” —George Kalamaras, Rain Taxi

“The poems in Dan Gerber’s latest collection, Sailing through Cassiopeia, exist in a lyrical remove from time. Via delicious imagery, masterful pacing, and long-sanded language, Gerber… maintains a continual curiosity and gentleness of spirit despite his keen awareness of the world’s inevitable horrors.” —Orion

“Where Gerber really starts to differentiate is in his approach: he frequently focuses with sustained intensity on something fairly ordinary or easily observed until it leads him to the unseen or not so easily discerned. He is really a metaphysical poet in physical garb.” —World Literature Today

“The clear directness of Dan Gerber’s poetry has distinguished it since I began reading it. The purity of his language and the sharpness of his attention present landscape, event, and feeling as one.” —W.S. Merwin

“Gerber has a gentle touch and an unaffected, articulate voice that can be smart, funny, wise—sometimes all at the same time.” —Library Journal

“… compelling and insightful verse. Sailing through Cassiopeia is a strong addition to any fine poetry collection looking at modern masters.” —Midwest Book Review

“As quiet and modest in their display as his poems sometimes seem, their agenda is bold. Gerber, the author of seven collections of poetry that from the beginning lovingly render physical detail, believes that something of great significance occurs when an object is rightly seen… Mindfulness, seeing things as they really are, both beauty and ugliness, informs the authentic life, and defines the aesthetic response to that life.” —Poetry East