His poetry is lyrical, but often complex rhythmically and structurally. Critic Karla Huston, writing in "Library Journal," notes that, "Owing to the poems' placement on the page and the near absence of punctuation, the reader is propelled through the verse, left with a sense of urgency and awe." Because of the frequency and particularity of Gander's references to the Virginia landscape, Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate, calls him "a Southern poet of a relatively rare kind, a restlessly experimental writer."

The subjects of Gander's formally innovative essays range from snapping turtles to translation to literary hoaxes. His critical essays have appeared in The Nation, The Boston Review, and The Providence Journal.

In 2008, New Directions published As a Friend, Gander's novel of a gifted man, a land surveyor, whose impact on those around him provokes an atmosphere of intense self-examination and eroticism. In The New York Times Book Review, Jeanette Winterson praised As a Friend as "a strange and beautiful novel.... haunting and haunted." It needs, she wrote, "to be read slowly, to be uncovered like a secret or discovered like a treasure."

Gander is a translator. Besides editing two anthologies of Mexican poetry, Gander has translated discrete volumes by Mexican poets: "Watchword" and "No Shelter" by Pura Lopez Colome" and (PEN Translation Prize Finalist) "Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho." "The Night" (Princeton, 2007), the second book of his translations, with Kent Johnson, of Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz, received a PEN Translation Award. Gander's critically-acclaimed translations of the Chilean Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda are included in "The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems" (City Lights, 2004)

Full-Length Poetry Collections

• Eye Against Eye (New Directions, 2005)
• The Blue Rock Collection (Salt Publishing, 2004)
• Torn Awake (New Directions, 2001)
• Science & Steepleflower (New Directions, 1998)
• Deeds of Utmost Kindness (University Press of New England, 1994)
• Lynchburg (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993)
• Rush to the Lake (Alice James Books, 1988)

Chapbooks

• Eggplants and Lotus Root (Burning Deck Books, 1991)

Novels

• As a Friend (New Directions, 2008)

Collaborative Works

• Twelve X 12:00 (The Nederlands, 2003, collaboration with artist Tjibbe Hooghiemstra)
• Sound of Summer Running (Nazraeli Press, 2005, collaboration with photographer Ray Meeks)

Essay Collections

• A Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory and Transcendence (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005)

In Translation

• Als es dich gab. Roman (luxbooks, Wiesbaden, 2010)

Translations

• Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho (New Directions, 2008)
• The Night: A Poem by Jaime Saenz (Princeton University Press, 2007, translation with Kent Johnson)
• No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez Colome (Graywolf Press, 2002)
• Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz (University of California Press, 2002, with Kent Johnson)

Anthologies Edited

• Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women (Milkweed Editions, 1993)