Amy Gerstler

"...Some of us grow up doing
credible impressions of model citizens
(though sooner or later hairline
cracks appear in our facades). The rest
get dubbed eccentrics, unnerved and undone
by other people's company, for which we
nevertheless pine..."
from "For My Niece Sidney, Age Six")

Gerstler's poems are witty and surreal. With humor she examines her place in the world as well as observes what others do as well. Her poetry does not judge us on some self-righteous principles, but in sort of the same show more fond way we remember with a chuckle or a smile what we used to think or do as a child - while still handling very tough themes such as suffering, love, and survival.This collection of poetry takes you through an open letter to her nice about how she already sees her younger self in her; in another poem, furniture and kitchen appliances come to life in order to console the narrator; there is an interview with a dog who explains the mystery as to why right after a bath he feels the need to roll in muck; and a tale about Frankenstein's monster and his wife and how they are getting along. This is a charming collection of poetry; very fun, very modern, and I believe very relevant. Gerstler is really a gem in modern American poetry. show less

This is so far the finest of Amy Gerstler's efforts I've yet read, though admittedly I'm falling behind. After the experimentation and haunted humor of Medicine, Ghost Girl carries those themes and expands them wonderfully. Poems about doll hospitals, a pastry chef's daughter, and dark magical rituals performed by adolescent girls demonstrate the poet's ever expanding talent for conjuring beautiful and truly ghostly portraits. She even makes toast poetic in one of my now favorite food poems.

Manic poems, overflowing with words, too often rushing by and over with no penetration.

I have so many thoughts
zipping around my head and I'm trying to fit
them all into words...

Thanks, "Dearest Creature," that sums it up pretty nicely. I didn't find much to enjoy in the first half of this collection. I see now why your daily prayers are soooo important... ugh, not to mention a pale winter sun/that hung over my house like a sucked/cough lozenge. No thanks.

The second half had some I liked all show more right. "Untranslatable" slings around old-time sounding cliches to amusing effect (he tried to put the bite on me right there in the speakeasy/for a hundred clams like I would ever have that kind of dough/you can bet your sweet ass I told him where to go). "Mrs. Monster Pens Her Memoirs" about two wounded bodies and souls finding relationship. "Dig", about humanness under profession (That frayed inhalation the microphone picks up,/that amplified fragment of animal gasp//is what gets me: precursor to all creaturely music. and My roaring inner wish/was to dunk his fingers in strong coffee and nibble//them like buttermilk crullers back home. If I'd had/any sense I would have said so in his guttural native tongue.)

1.5 stars for the first half, 3 stars for the second. show less

One of Gerstler's earliest collections, Bitter Angel is marked by her familiar sense of play in nightmarish and macabre landscapes. Her style generates great imagery that is by turns haunting and clever. Her poems undercut an expected gravity in favor of a dark and destabilizing playfulness, though a few a lines here sorely lacked gravity or humor in favor of abstraction. The frequent transitions between verse and prose poetry sometimes disrupt the movement of the collection.