This post was updated Oct. 31 at 8:19 p.m.

The crowd was anything but barren when listening to Forrest Gander read his work about life in a desert.

Gander, an author and an emeritus chancellor for the Academy of American Poets, read excerpts from his latest book “Mojave Ghost” at the Hammer Museum on Tuesday. Before he began, Stephen Yenser, a distinguished professor emeritus of English, introduced Gander and his work. During the introduction, Yenser explained that the title is a couplet in dimeter, given that there are two beats per line. Yenser said he thinks the novel poem is about Gander’s love for different people.

“It’s a story about love,” Yenser said. “The poet has known it with at least three women – his mother, who taught him a lot about the desert, … and two partners.”

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During his speech, Yenser said it can sometimes be unclear whom exactly Gander is referring to in his book. In his poem, Gander writes, “All my gestures are addressed to you.” This could mean his mother, Yenser said to the crowd. A few lines later, Gander writes that he can see the joy he is going to experience when looking at photos of him before he met someone else. Yenser made the interpretation that this line in the poem refers to a lover and not his mother. The poet then writes in present tense, and Yenser said he thinks this represents Gander’s transition from talking about the second person to another figure.

“One of the lessons of this book is that there is nothing that is not connected,” Yenser said. “If it’s living, even if it’s not living in this world, it’s connected to the rest of us.”

Victoria Chang, an event attendee, said she did not read “Mojave Ghost” as much as a love poem and instead read it more as an elegy with discussions about mortality and environmental issues. Before his reading, Gander said he recently lost his wife, mother and sister, and he was reminded of those difficult emotions when he passed by the Mojave Desert – the place where he was born.

Fabiola Favela, another attendee of the event, said she grew up in a desert and enjoyed learning about Gander’s journey in a similar place. Since she has lived in the desert for most of her life, Favela said she has always thought of the location as being desolate with little to offer. Karla Favela, who also attended the event with her sister Fabiola, added that she often thought about leaving the desert. But Fabiola said she loved how Gander described this absence of action from a more positive angle.

“My favorite part is something he said about stillness – that when you’re still in the desert, things don’t move,” Fabiola said. “When you don’t look for them, when you let them be, they come to you.”

Karla said she understood Gander’s depiction of the desert to be the opposite of what most would imagine the landscape to be. She added that she felt as though she often had to explain herself to others because no one truly understood what life was like in the desert. Some people find that there is nothing in deserts and focus on its obscurity, Karla said. After listening to Gander’s novel poem about his experiences, she added that she is considering the possibility of continuing to build a life in the desert because she can now appreciate what it has to offer.

During the Q&A session that followed the reading, Gander expressed that if someone is not prepared, they can easily die in the desert. Given the conditions of the desert, people are required to be attentive, which further unites humanity by forging similarities with previous generations, Gander added.

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Gander’s knowledge about geology was surprising, Fabiola said. During the Q&A session, Gander said because he has a degree in geology, he developed the ability to view large structures from afar and see them in intricate detail. When he was hiking, for example, Gander said part of him was grieving, and another part of him was full of love. He added that he felt fractured between the two, comparing his state of mind to a fracture zone between two continental plates.

“I read so many books about grief, the seven stages of grief,” Gander said. “What I realized is that, for me, I want all of that in me. I don’t want to deny any of it, even as I celebrate happiness and joy.”