Medicine

Description

Amy Gerstler has won acclaim for complex yet accessible poetry that is by turns extravagant, subversive, surreal, and playful. In her new collection, Medicine, she deploys a variety of dramatic voices, spoken by such disparate characters as Cinderella’s wicked sisters, the wife of a nineteenth-century naturalist, a homicide detective, and a woman who is happily married to a bear. Their elusive collectivity suggests, but never quite defines, the floating authorial presence that haunts them. Gerstler’s abiding interests–in love and mourning, in science and pseudo-science, in the idea of an afterlife–are strongly evident in these new poems, which are full of strong emotion, language play, surprising twists, and a wicked sense of black humor.MedicinePrayer for Jackson
To a Young Woman in a Coma
Nearby
The Bear-Boy of Lithuania
The Naturalist’s Wife
Yom Kippur in Utah
The Story of Toasted Cheese
A Nautical Tale
Loss
An Attempt at Solace
Scorched Cinderella
A Non-Christian on Sunday
Lovesickness: a radio play for four disembodied voices
The Bride Goes Wild
Overheard at the Watering Hole
Prescription for Living
To My Husband, on the First Anniversary of His Mother’s Death
A Sage in Retirement
Spring Tonic
Cut-Up
July 3rd
Address to a Broom
The Holy Storm
Things That Loosen the Tongue
Word Salad
Mysterious Tears
Retreat
Medicine
A Crushed House
Corpse and Mourner
Fugutive Color
A Severe Lack of Holiday Spirit
“The landscape sends us our beloved”
Tidings
NightfallAmy Gerstler is a writer of fiction, poetry, and journalism whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including the Paris Review and Best American Poetry. Her 1990 book Bitter Angel won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Previous titles from Penguin are Crown of Weeds, 1997, and Nerve Storm, 1993.US

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