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 in Agni Review, and "original and fascinating" by John Ashbery. With poems in the leading journals of the day -- American Poetry Review, Grand Street, Conjunctions, The Boston Review, to name just a few -- Gander plumbs the erotic depths of human interaction with the land. The poems in Science & Steepleflower test this relationship with what Publisher's Weekly has called "an inbred (and often haunting) spirituality", bringing us to new vistas of linguistic and perceptive grace.