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Scattered at Sea (Poets, Penguin)

by Amy Gerstler

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432590,658 (3.83)7
"A dazzling new collection from an award-winning poet Amy Gerstler has won acclaim for sly, sophisticated, and subversive poems that find meaning in unexpected places. The title of her new collection, Scattered at Sea, evokes notions of dispersion, diaspora, sowing one's wild oats, having one's mind expanded or blown, losing one's wits, and mortality. Making use of dramatic monologue, elegy, humor, and collage, these poems explore hedonism, gender, ancestry, reincarnation, bereavement, and the nature of prayer. Groping for an inclusive, imaginative, postmodern spirituality, they draw from an array of sources, including the philosophy of the ancient Stoics, diagnostic tests for Alzheimer's disease, 1950s recipes, the Babylonian Talmud, and Walter Benjamin's writing on his drug experiences"--… (more)
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Unfortunately, I couldn't really connect with this one. It has some nice lines, like "Is a child an exegesis of parental texts?" in "Childlessness" (24) and "Try, for once in your life, to really / wake up.
Refill with clean, soapy water" in "Penance" (68-69), but there's not a single poem I think I'll remember a week from now. I'm not sure I like Gerstler's voice.

Read the review on my blog here. ( )
  littlebookjockey | Sep 15, 2020 |
This is one of Gerstler's strongest collections, but the amount of levity here sometimes overpowers and carries off the macabre weight. Gerstler's best collections (Ghost Girl comes to mind) balance these two elements with deft and skill. Here though, the humor and quirkiness overshadows the macabre elements. That said, this book is full of powerful and strange imagery and a couple of the poems here are among her best. ( )
  poetontheone | Mar 30, 2016 |
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"A dazzling new collection from an award-winning poet Amy Gerstler has won acclaim for sly, sophisticated, and subversive poems that find meaning in unexpected places. The title of her new collection, Scattered at Sea, evokes notions of dispersion, diaspora, sowing one's wild oats, having one's mind expanded or blown, losing one's wits, and mortality. Making use of dramatic monologue, elegy, humor, and collage, these poems explore hedonism, gender, ancestry, reincarnation, bereavement, and the nature of prayer. Groping for an inclusive, imaginative, postmodern spirituality, they draw from an array of sources, including the philosophy of the ancient Stoics, diagnostic tests for Alzheimer's disease, 1950s recipes, the Babylonian Talmud, and Walter Benjamin's writing on his drug experiences"--

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