Nerve Storm

Description

“Your thoughts become fluid, volatile; their aroma fills the room. This is a nerve storm.”

In her first collection since Bitter Angel, winner of the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award, Amy Gerstler explores themes of suffering and redemption through a heady blend of folklore, popular culture, and the natural world in Nerve Storm. The poet Eileen Myles has said that “the supernatural, the sexy mundane, the out-of-sight are simply [Gerstler’s] materials, employed as they might be in a piece of religious art.” A crackling wit and whimsical instinct guide this collection as Gerstler traipses through humanity’s triumphs and blunders, effortlessly revealing the surreal and surprising possibilities inherent in everyday life.Nerve StormAcknowledgments

Petition
Shroud Song
Scarlet Fever
French Leave
Overheard on the Soul Train
Ether
Rest Cure
Mr. Right
My Place in His Heart
That Calm Sunday That Rolls
On and On
Freud’s Apology
A Hypochondriac’s Account of Herself
My Muse
Dust
Extended Vacation
Around the Block in Eighty Days
Suffering in the Old Testament
The Mermaid’s Purse
Lost in the Forest
A Sinking Feeling
On Wanting to Grow Horns
Dead Hunters
Diary of a Lonely Antcatcher
Grass
Losing Heart
Dear Rage Management Supervisor,
Fugue
Duet
Queen for a Day
The Virility Room
Daughter of Eve
The Stretcher-bearers
Doomsday
Nerve Storm
The One for Me
Sad Women’s Harvest Song
Duration
Modern Madonnas
Consolation
When empty of light,
An Invalid
Autobiography

About the Author

Amy 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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