Before a star signified a brilliant point in infinite expanse, it marked the boundary; it marked the cosmic wall. Galileo knocked that wall over with his eye. But as Gordon Hadfield acutely shows, the bricks from one wall knocked over are recollected, and put to use again, keeping out what isn't allowed in, and keeping in what isn't allowed out. The human world repeats the cosmic one. But no boundary fully holds. A poem puts a chink in a border even as it affirms its existence; a poem can be that weed that takes root in mortar. Hadfield, in DISTANTS, shows us the walls we've built: the Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, the Berlin Wall, the Palestinian Wall, the Border Wall, the walls around suburban gated communities. Each wall is one. He also gives us the means for crossing, for tunneling, for immigrating illegally. The syllable is a trespassing witness. Hadfield is our poet-guide. He shows us the gaps and tells us to go in.

—Dan Beachy-Quick     

 

Gordon Hadfield's poems, translations, and essays have appeared in journals including Fence , Circumference , Chain , and Denver Quarterly . He is co-author of correspondence (with Sasha Steensen), a chapbook published by Handwritten Press in 2005, and his translation of Abdellatif Laâbi's Fragments d'une genèse oubliée / Fragments of a Forgotten Genesis is forthcoming from Leafe Press. He lives in Colorado, where he studies law and co-edits Bonfire Press.