POET

Amy Gerstler (1956 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Known for witty, complex poetry that reflects such themes as redemption, suffering, and survival, Amy Gerstler won the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for the collection Bitter Angel. Though Gerstler has penned several poetry volumes, including Yonder, Early Heaven, Christy's Alpine Inn, and 1993's Nerve Storm, she is best known for Bitter Angel, which garnered significant critical acclaim. Gerstler has also received praise for White Marriage/Recovery, which Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Jonathan Kirsch deemed "an odd but utterly beguiling bit of small-press ephemera." The critic called the writing "spare, almost encoded, but richly evocative."

In Bitter Angel Gerstler introduces a variety of narrators, including a saint, ghost, clairvoyant, father, child, and lover. Her characters are often outsiders who, according to Publishers Weekly, "share a kind of grace" because of their disenfranchisement. Gerstler also evokes the surreal, supernatural, and ironic, using various poetic forms and vernacular speech. Sexuality is another of Gerstler's themes, as Eileen Myles observed in the Voice Literary Supplement: "Actually, it's not sex she's talking about but desire, even lust, which cohabits with unlikely traits: modesty, a longing for disembodiment, death, disintegration, and a queer reverence for sainthood and suffering."

Bitter Angel was enthusiastically received by reviewers, who praised Gerstler's originality. A Publishers Weekly critic commented that Gerstler "balances classical allusion with bold experimentation in voice, form and content." The result is a "tension" that lends an "urgent, honest edge" to her work. According to Myles, Gerstler's poetry is "extremely rich. But not cluttered and not loud." The reviewer added that "the supernatural, the sexy mundane, the out-of-sight are simply her materials, employed as they might be in a piece of religious art."

"In Gerstler," wrote David Shapiro in American Poetry Review, "we see how effective a quiet ruminative and contemplative poem can be. . . . On the other hand, Gerstler has a series of complex, humorous prose poems which can be as immediate and imagistic as a germ: 'A few germs float up the baby's nose while the mother reads, making the infant sneeze.'" According to American Book Review contributor Sarah Gorham, the poems in Bitter Angel "strip down all basic assumptions about beauty and truth and holiness, and begin a struggle for redemption from the gutter. . . . Because of this, the drive for ascension in Gerstler's work becomes that much more valiant, and comic." And Michael Dirda, writing in Washington Post Book World, noted that although some of the poet's juxtapositions appeared "improbable," "all objections are overruled by Gerstler's sheer acrobatic brilliance."

Gerstler followed Bitter Angel with Nerve Storm, where she "continues her intense, and often savage, pursuit of redemption," according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Pat Monaghan, writing in Booklist, called Gerstler's realm one of "hallucinatory moments in normal, even crass, circumstances." In one poem, a cow announces that "Prior to this promotion / I was the town drunk." A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that Gerstler's "best poems are relentless, soul-searching, surreal and wonderfully inexplicable."

The poems in Medicine explore the medical and metaphysical through prayers, laments, and lists that "channel great lyric eruptions," to quote Donna Seaman in Booklist. Included in the volume is a poem in which Gerstler confronts a woman in a coma and another in which she prays over an infant, mindful of the suffering it will face in its life. Another poem, "A Non-Christian on Sunday," describes a quiet but slightly unsettling world in the absence of church-goers. Library Journal reviewer Ann K. van Buren cited the volume for its "entertaining verbal swordplay as well as socially significant compositions." A Publishers Weekly correspondent noted that the best poems in the work "always have a distinctive spin, run through her abiding interests, the intersections of self, soul sickness and cultural drek." The critic concluded: "This is a vibrant and passionate collection of poems."

CAREER

Poet, fiction writer, and journalist. Visiting professor of creative writing, University of California at Irvine, 1996. Performer of text-works and collaborator on installations in museums, including Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, and Josh Baer Gallery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Yonder (poems), Little Caesar Press, 1981.
Christy's Alpine Inn (poems), Sherwood Press, 1982.
White Marriage/ Recovery (poems), Illuminati (Los Angeles), 1984.
Early Heaven (poems), Ouija Madness Press, 1984.
Martine's Mouth (fiction), Illuminati, 1985.
The True Bride (poems), Lapis Press (Santa Monica, CA), 1986.
Primitive Man (fiction), Hanuman Books (New York City), 1987.
(With Alexis Smith) Past Lives (artists book), Santa Monica Museum of Art (Santa Monica, CA), 1989.
Bitter Angel (poems), North Point Press (San Francisco, CA), 1990, reprinted, Carnegie Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1997.
Nerve Storm (poems), Viking-Penguin (New York City), 1993.
Crown of Weeds (poems), Penguin (New York City), 1997.
Medicine (poems), Penguin, 2000.
Ghost Girl, Penguin Books, 2004.
(With Carol S. Eliel and Lari Pittman) Lee Mullican: An Abundant Harvest of Sun, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2005.