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Scattered at Sea
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.
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.
- GenresPoetry
79 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 26, 2015
13 people are currently reading
392 people want to read
About the author
Amy Gerstler
33 books72 followersKnown for its wit and complexity, Amy Gerstler's poetry deals with themes such as redemption, suffering, and survival. Author of over a dozen poetry collections, two works of fiction, and various articles, reviews, and collaborations with visual artists, Gerstler won the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for Bitter Angel (1990). Her early work, including White Marriage/Recovery (1984), was highly praised. Gerstler's more recent works include Nerve Storm (1993), Medicine (2000), Ghost Girl (2004), Dearest Creature (2009), which the New York Times named a Notable Book of the Year, and Scattered At Sea (2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Born in 1956, Gerstler is a graduate of Pitzer College and holds an M.F.A. from Bennington College. She is now a professor in the MFA writing program at the University of California, Irvine. Previously, she taught in the Bennington Writing Seminars program, at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and the University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing Program. She lives in California with her husband, the artist and author Benjamin Weissman.
Born in 1956, Gerstler is a graduate of Pitzer College and holds an M.F.A. from Bennington College. She is now a professor in the MFA writing program at the University of California, Irvine. Previously, she taught in the Bennington Writing Seminars program, at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and the University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing Program. She lives in California with her husband, the artist and author Benjamin Weissman.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
November 26, 2015
I have found a new favorite poet in Amy Gerstler. I'm relatively new to poetry: I've always liked it, but very seldom engaged with it outside of classroom situations. And while Amy Gerstler is a renowned artist, I first heard of her through Bookworm, where she read quite a few poems from her new collection: http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/show...
First and foremost, I love her wordplay; the way her words alternatively bristle and flow, how they make use of their sound structure to present startling connections ( Our dead delight in/ that harsh purr/ each page makes/ ripping away/ they crave/ ragged edges ). The title already gives a sense that, while a lot of the imagery comes from the sea, it is not the holiday-beach-swimming kind of sea, but the ancient, mysterious sea connected to our heritage, but also to veneration and mortality. Scattered at sea. In the first poem, it says:
Do not forget me murmurs something
nibbled by fishes under the sea.
And later in the same poem:
Some of us (but not you)
are poorly moored
to our bodies. We can
barely walk a straight line,
feeling every moment
just resuscitated
after having almost drowned,
still dribbling clear fluid
from the corners of our
mouths
[...]
We bubble
and spume, trying
to talk underwater.
There are so many exampled I could give, but - with poetry especially - everyone will respond differently. What delights me, or challenges me, will leave someone else completely cold. The poem that made me buy the book (as Michael Silverblatt rightly assumes in the above-mentioned interview) was "Womanishness", which begins like this:
The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly
drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while science
was the music of our minds.
It's starts intriguingly with "dissonance" which has a negative connotation, doesn't it? Of something not fitting, or not sounding right. This not "sounding right" is picked up right away by "shrill". But the string of words that follow have all kinds of associations. And although "shrill" and "fuss" frame them, and they could come from misogynistic comments, putting them together like this has an amusing effect. To me, it almost sounds like a defying statement. I AM frilly, silly, pouty - so what? Surprising then, how this is followed by "And all the while science was the music of our minds". So while people concentrated on seemingly "feminine" attributes, women had other things on their minds, quite literally. I won't continue here, but needless to say: I loved it. This is a short poem with many surprises, maybe the biggest of them at the end: Hush, hush, my love. These things happened/ a long time ago. You needn't be afraid of them, now.
I wonder who needs reassuring with this lullaby...
First and foremost, I love her wordplay; the way her words alternatively bristle and flow, how they make use of their sound structure to present startling connections ( Our dead delight in/ that harsh purr/ each page makes/ ripping away/ they crave/ ragged edges ). The title already gives a sense that, while a lot of the imagery comes from the sea, it is not the holiday-beach-swimming kind of sea, but the ancient, mysterious sea connected to our heritage, but also to veneration and mortality. Scattered at sea. In the first poem, it says:
Do not forget me murmurs something
nibbled by fishes under the sea.
And later in the same poem:
Some of us (but not you)
are poorly moored
to our bodies. We can
barely walk a straight line,
feeling every moment
just resuscitated
after having almost drowned,
still dribbling clear fluid
from the corners of our
mouths
[...]
We bubble
and spume, trying
to talk underwater.
There are so many exampled I could give, but - with poetry especially - everyone will respond differently. What delights me, or challenges me, will leave someone else completely cold. The poem that made me buy the book (as Michael Silverblatt rightly assumes in the above-mentioned interview) was "Womanishness", which begins like this:
The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly
drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while science
was the music of our minds.
It's starts intriguingly with "dissonance" which has a negative connotation, doesn't it? Of something not fitting, or not sounding right. This not "sounding right" is picked up right away by "shrill". But the string of words that follow have all kinds of associations. And although "shrill" and "fuss" frame them, and they could come from misogynistic comments, putting them together like this has an amusing effect. To me, it almost sounds like a defying statement. I AM frilly, silly, pouty - so what? Surprising then, how this is followed by "And all the while science was the music of our minds". So while people concentrated on seemingly "feminine" attributes, women had other things on their minds, quite literally. I won't continue here, but needless to say: I loved it. This is a short poem with many surprises, maybe the biggest of them at the end: Hush, hush, my love. These things happened/ a long time ago. You needn't be afraid of them, now.
I wonder who needs reassuring with this lullaby...
September 24, 2015
I read this volume of poetry because it was announced as a finalist for the National Book Award.
I like the language in Gerstler's poems, all chewy words (if you know what I mean you get a gold star!) A good example is in "Prehistoric Porn Film" - "twig crack, muzzle cuff snuffinglicks nuzzleshove...."
My favorites included:
"In Search of Something to Worship, My Eyes Lighted On You"
I'm drawn to men
life has sledgehammered...
Now he's the invisible guest at all my feasts...."
"Womanishness"
The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly
drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while
science was the music of our minds..."
"Rumbles from a Minor Deity"
"Thanks for the badass offering!...
Leave off seeking what wounds you. I won't warn you again."
"Gratitude Prayer"
"Thanks for the rickety body, which lends us form!
And for what we believe can't be scattered at sea.
Thanks for itinerant monks, enraged mobs,
And blind librarians!..."
I like the language in Gerstler's poems, all chewy words (if you know what I mean you get a gold star!) A good example is in "Prehistoric Porn Film" - "twig crack, muzzle cuff snuffinglicks nuzzleshove...."
My favorites included:
"In Search of Something to Worship, My Eyes Lighted On You"
I'm drawn to men
life has sledgehammered...
Now he's the invisible guest at all my feasts...."
"Womanishness"
The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly
drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while
science was the music of our minds..."
"Rumbles from a Minor Deity"
"Thanks for the badass offering!...
Leave off seeking what wounds you. I won't warn you again."
"Gratitude Prayer"
"Thanks for the rickety body, which lends us form!
And for what we believe can't be scattered at sea.
Thanks for itinerant monks, enraged mobs,
And blind librarians!..."
September 24, 2015
I'm a page mangler and annotater and a nervous cover-peeler, so if you were to look at my copy of SCATTERED AT SEA you could tell which poems I loved most by the corners turned down, catalogue-style, to mark moments of intense admiration. The folded corners are all clustered in the second half of the book, where the poems about losing loved ones mentally or physically were grouped together under section titles that all by themselves clutch the heart: "IV: What I Did with Your Ashes." There is so much to love in this book that I could quote from it all morning--"The suicide's wife/lives on an island/of last-ditch attempts and ancient consolations" and "It's still him, I tell myself every day. Still alive. Still in there . His sense of humor is mostly intact"). I would have to do that, really, to give you a sense of all the voices in this book, all the ways it is visceral, funny, angry, calm, and wise. I will end, though, with the following line addressed to God in "Gratitude Prayer," so you'll believe me about the humor: "Congrats on being invisible!"
September 3, 2015
This collection wasn't consistently great, but it has a lot of great poems in it. Does that make sense?
"Womanishness" being my favorite. It is a fun and at the same time bleak book.
"Womanishness" being my favorite. It is a fun and at the same time bleak book.
February 27, 2016
Originally published at Hong Kong Review of Books: http://hkrbooks.com/2016/02/27/scatte...
Amy Gerstler’s poetry has always had a maniacal edge. In prior collections, she illustrates an ability to make hard-hitting and real observations in a verse that remains slight and tends to be both scattered and surreal. This tendency remains prominent in her most recent collection with Penguin, Scattered At Sea. However, while her manic style seemed more unique in the late 1990s when Gerstler first burst onto the stage, now, in the age of social media, her poetry seems to share much more with other poetry we might now see as having a referential quality that responds to internet meme culture. Yet, despite my distrust of this absurd and now more common style, the manic quality has any endeared me to Gerstler’s work more than alienated me from it, particularly in the case of this latest collection.
Gerstler scatters her topics and observations, but there are some “movements” reigning in her madcap poetry. The first section focuses on sex, the next on banality, the third on death, while the latter seems to explore spirituality. The themes are remarkably consistent: the core things of life , such as sex, death, going to the grocery store, can cause disorientation, loss, and wonderment. We are scattered like the sea creatures on the cover, both comically but also beautifully.
Gerstler’s habits of normalizing the absolutely strange and making the banal seem secretly odd is used to good effect in this collection. One sees, in poems like “Stoics” and “The Suicide’s Wife,” a willingness to go to places that seem both serious and humorous, both banal and weird. The strength in accepting death becomes almost caricatural in “The Suicide’s Wife” and in both “Early Greek Philosophy” and the “Stoics,” our selective acceptance of the abundant wisdom from people who still looked in bird intestines for hints of the future renders even common intellectual presumptions strange.
In “The Suicide’s Wife” one can see strength, humor, and grief all at once, but scattered through the poem:
six weeks later she looks great
thin and translucent
a statue of justice sans blindfold
she wears beautiful blouses now
peach, gold, seedling green
her complexion
has never been better
lushness nips at the heels
of destruction
This can be contrasted with a cartoonish image of the Suicide’s wife almost comically soaked to the bone, even her panties water logged, which occurs just before it. The juxtaposition here is very powerful: the comic mingling with the tragic, statuesque composure crammed near cartoonish images of overwhelming grief, felt tragedy paired with strength from surviving it. The depth of feeling is hidden in playful idiom and slice-of-life observations.
This is not to say that playfulness or Gerstler’s bold irreverence is lacking from the poem. In the aforementioned “Early Greek Philosophers,” Gerstler is humanely mocking all involved:
On sorting the jumble of events into gorgeous order
Getting a lot of the science right
While still pawing through entrails to divine the future
A vigorous lot of intellectual adventurers
Whose mission was to explain the universe
Wild minds we have only in fragments
Because whether papyrus scraps, birch bark
Or this mortal coil
Dammit, matter just doesn’t last
Gerstler’s point is not just that philosophers are sillier than we make them out to be, but that our wider preoccupation with ‘eternal truths’ seems somewhat ridiculous when paired with the decay of earthly things, including our bodies. The intellectualization often assumed in the spiritual and philosophical is often complicated in Gerstler’s pairing it against bodies—both male and female—which seem awkward, almost alien, and utterly amusing. One can see these images popping up over and over again. For example, in “Sea Foam Place” the poem turns on these lines:
to our bodies we can
barely walk a straight line,
remaining (most days) only
marginally conscious.
We stagger and shudder
as buckets of blood or sperm
or chocolate mousse or spittle
or lymph or sludge sluice
continually through us…
I love the way you wear your
face, how you ride this life.
I delight in the sight of you,
your nervous, inquisitive eyes,
though I try to act otherwise.
Gerstler uses the seemingly disgusting litany of fluids that strangely animate our bodies turning into a memory of attractiveness and affection. Similarly, in her poem “Womanishness,” we see the viscerally moist used to make one’s body more alien than one’s mind:
The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly
drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while
science was the music of our minds…”
The repetition of such child-like sounds pairs disarmingly well with Gerstler’s intended effect. The language also mirrors that of misogynistic mocking of a woman’s opinion, but it’s the body being mocked while the “science was the music of our minds” which inverts both gendered and poetic expectations for the stanza. This effect seems playfully sloppy at first—partly because of its subject matter—but is actually quite expert it is ability to undermine itself for poetic and emotional effects.
These juxtapositions can be dizzying, even slightly annoying. In several of Gerstler’s ‘catalogue’ poems, the apparently arbitrariness of the images doesn’t produce as the emotional resonance of the rest of the collection. One can see this in “A Short History of Sublime Moments on Hold,” “”Press five to put continents between you and a former love/ . . .Press eight to be connected to an invertebrate.” Sometimes the shock of the an image is a little too much—for example, “cunts that taste of mustard.” Gerslter’s love for idiom, particularly onomatopoeia, can be tiresome, such as “Prehistoric Porn Film” – “twig crack, muzzle cuff snuffinglicks nuzzleshove….” In short, sometimes the scattered nature of the poems doesn’t cohere enough and the idiosyncrasy of Gerstler’s style produces a flat note. Yet the overall effect is richer than these over indulgences would indicate.
Grestler’s overall effect is surprising cohesive—more late Coltrane than Ornette Coleman—and it can be deeply effective. In the last section of the collection, the poems become the more clearly reflective. One can feel it in “Kitchen Annunciation”:
Brute beast led by sensuality
And yearning, weak as an earthworm,
Don’t shun my light. Correct your
Affections. Revel while you’re flesh.
Gerstler’s direct address and violation of the ban on telling being particularly effective here. Awe and wonder are here, but so is mortality. In Gerstler’s playful juxtapositions, there is a reflection on life that is deceptively deep for a poet who presents her work in the form of almost childlike idiom.
Amy Gerstler’s poetry has always had a maniacal edge. In prior collections, she illustrates an ability to make hard-hitting and real observations in a verse that remains slight and tends to be both scattered and surreal. This tendency remains prominent in her most recent collection with Penguin, Scattered At Sea. However, while her manic style seemed more unique in the late 1990s when Gerstler first burst onto the stage, now, in the age of social media, her poetry seems to share much more with other poetry we might now see as having a referential quality that responds to internet meme culture. Yet, despite my distrust of this absurd and now more common style, the manic quality has any endeared me to Gerstler’s work more than alienated me from it, particularly in the case of this latest collection.
Gerstler scatters her topics and observations, but there are some “movements” reigning in her madcap poetry. The first section focuses on sex, the next on banality, the third on death, while the latter seems to explore spirituality. The themes are remarkably consistent: the core things of life , such as sex, death, going to the grocery store, can cause disorientation, loss, and wonderment. We are scattered like the sea creatures on the cover, both comically but also beautifully.
Gerstler’s habits of normalizing the absolutely strange and making the banal seem secretly odd is used to good effect in this collection. One sees, in poems like “Stoics” and “The Suicide’s Wife,” a willingness to go to places that seem both serious and humorous, both banal and weird. The strength in accepting death becomes almost caricatural in “The Suicide’s Wife” and in both “Early Greek Philosophy” and the “Stoics,” our selective acceptance of the abundant wisdom from people who still looked in bird intestines for hints of the future renders even common intellectual presumptions strange.
In “The Suicide’s Wife” one can see strength, humor, and grief all at once, but scattered through the poem:
six weeks later she looks great
thin and translucent
a statue of justice sans blindfold
she wears beautiful blouses now
peach, gold, seedling green
her complexion
has never been better
lushness nips at the heels
of destruction
This can be contrasted with a cartoonish image of the Suicide’s wife almost comically soaked to the bone, even her panties water logged, which occurs just before it. The juxtaposition here is very powerful: the comic mingling with the tragic, statuesque composure crammed near cartoonish images of overwhelming grief, felt tragedy paired with strength from surviving it. The depth of feeling is hidden in playful idiom and slice-of-life observations.
This is not to say that playfulness or Gerstler’s bold irreverence is lacking from the poem. In the aforementioned “Early Greek Philosophers,” Gerstler is humanely mocking all involved:
On sorting the jumble of events into gorgeous order
Getting a lot of the science right
While still pawing through entrails to divine the future
A vigorous lot of intellectual adventurers
Whose mission was to explain the universe
Wild minds we have only in fragments
Because whether papyrus scraps, birch bark
Or this mortal coil
Dammit, matter just doesn’t last
Gerstler’s point is not just that philosophers are sillier than we make them out to be, but that our wider preoccupation with ‘eternal truths’ seems somewhat ridiculous when paired with the decay of earthly things, including our bodies. The intellectualization often assumed in the spiritual and philosophical is often complicated in Gerstler’s pairing it against bodies—both male and female—which seem awkward, almost alien, and utterly amusing. One can see these images popping up over and over again. For example, in “Sea Foam Place” the poem turns on these lines:
to our bodies we can
barely walk a straight line,
remaining (most days) only
marginally conscious.
We stagger and shudder
as buckets of blood or sperm
or chocolate mousse or spittle
or lymph or sludge sluice
continually through us…
I love the way you wear your
face, how you ride this life.
I delight in the sight of you,
your nervous, inquisitive eyes,
though I try to act otherwise.
Gerstler uses the seemingly disgusting litany of fluids that strangely animate our bodies turning into a memory of attractiveness and affection. Similarly, in her poem “Womanishness,” we see the viscerally moist used to make one’s body more alien than one’s mind:
The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly
drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while
science was the music of our minds…”
The repetition of such child-like sounds pairs disarmingly well with Gerstler’s intended effect. The language also mirrors that of misogynistic mocking of a woman’s opinion, but it’s the body being mocked while the “science was the music of our minds” which inverts both gendered and poetic expectations for the stanza. This effect seems playfully sloppy at first—partly because of its subject matter—but is actually quite expert it is ability to undermine itself for poetic and emotional effects.
These juxtapositions can be dizzying, even slightly annoying. In several of Gerstler’s ‘catalogue’ poems, the apparently arbitrariness of the images doesn’t produce as the emotional resonance of the rest of the collection. One can see this in “A Short History of Sublime Moments on Hold,” “”Press five to put continents between you and a former love/ . . .Press eight to be connected to an invertebrate.” Sometimes the shock of the an image is a little too much—for example, “cunts that taste of mustard.” Gerslter’s love for idiom, particularly onomatopoeia, can be tiresome, such as “Prehistoric Porn Film” – “twig crack, muzzle cuff snuffinglicks nuzzleshove….” In short, sometimes the scattered nature of the poems doesn’t cohere enough and the idiosyncrasy of Gerstler’s style produces a flat note. Yet the overall effect is richer than these over indulgences would indicate.
Grestler’s overall effect is surprising cohesive—more late Coltrane than Ornette Coleman—and it can be deeply effective. In the last section of the collection, the poems become the more clearly reflective. One can feel it in “Kitchen Annunciation”:
Brute beast led by sensuality
And yearning, weak as an earthworm,
Don’t shun my light. Correct your
Affections. Revel while you’re flesh.
Gerstler’s direct address and violation of the ban on telling being particularly effective here. Awe and wonder are here, but so is mortality. In Gerstler’s playful juxtapositions, there is a reflection on life that is deceptively deep for a poet who presents her work in the form of almost childlike idiom.
December 7, 2015
3.5 stars, really. some standout poems. i dig the eel jacuzzi.
August 15, 2023
Poems to read again, such variety and word play. Here is one (the end inspired by Walter Benjamin):
MIRACULOUS,
that there was no blood in the toilet this morning.
That the beloved dog lasted as long as he did.
(His patience and resignation remain,
though you can no longer smell them.)
That waking ever follows hibernation:
truly astonishing. Incredible, that illness
is ever recovered from, that curtains so
faithfully translate the language of wind.
Excerpt From
Scattered at Sea
Amy Gerstler
MIRACULOUS,
that there was no blood in the toilet this morning.
That the beloved dog lasted as long as he did.
(His patience and resignation remain,
though you can no longer smell them.)
That waking ever follows hibernation:
truly astonishing. Incredible, that illness
is ever recovered from, that curtains so
faithfully translate the language of wind.
Excerpt From
Scattered at Sea
Amy Gerstler
August 4, 2025
Fun and bleak and a work I can't wait to revisit!
December 21, 2023
just not for me
January 21, 2022
WOMANISHNESS
The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly
drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while
science was the music of our minds. Our sexual
identities glittery as tinsel, we fretted about god’s
difficulties with intimacy, waiting for day’s luster
to fade so we could slip into something less
venerated. Like sea anemones at high tide
our minds snatched at whatever rushed by.
Hush, hush, my love. These things happened
a long time ago. You needn’t be afraid of them, now.
The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly
drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while
science was the music of our minds. Our sexual
identities glittery as tinsel, we fretted about god’s
difficulties with intimacy, waiting for day’s luster
to fade so we could slip into something less
venerated. Like sea anemones at high tide
our minds snatched at whatever rushed by.
Hush, hush, my love. These things happened
a long time ago. You needn’t be afraid of them, now.
July 4, 2021
This is an award winning poet, one of the Penguin collection, that many enjoy. Lovely cover and title. I seem to start every poetry review by saying, I'm no judge of poetry. I beginning to think only those who write or teach can.
I can only judge a collection of poetry by what I feel in my heart or intellect or appreciate and enjoy simply for the sound of the language, metphor or meter. That can be anything from the ' Instagram worthy' Alfa to the ancient Greeks but I just couldn't connect with this collection. My 2 star is a reflection of my enjoyment not the quality of the collection.
I can only judge a collection of poetry by what I feel in my heart or intellect or appreciate and enjoy simply for the sound of the language, metphor or meter. That can be anything from the ' Instagram worthy' Alfa to the ancient Greeks but I just couldn't connect with this collection. My 2 star is a reflection of my enjoyment not the quality of the collection.
July 29, 2015
A 2015 volume that is at times comedic and also searching
and intelligent. The title is from a quote by Lao Tzu:
"He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much."
There is the clever "A short history of sublime moments
of Hold." Then there is a touching Ancestor Psalm. A sane
poet in this chaotic world.
and intelligent. The title is from a quote by Lao Tzu:
"He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much."
There is the clever "A short history of sublime moments
of Hold." Then there is a touching Ancestor Psalm. A sane
poet in this chaotic world.
July 10, 2016
These poems are at once exactly what I expected and want from poetry and then full of things I never would have considered to look for or write or read about. I'll have to read this again for quotations.
April 11, 2017
These are very good poems.
October 15, 2015
A gorgeous, strange, and unique batch of poems with a voice that is unquestioningly confident in its ability to see out of the ordinary. Loved it, even if I'm not the type to read much poetry.
June 13, 2016
What an incredible poet!!!??? I'm so happy to have stumbled upon her in the library.
April 12, 2016
Delightful, as always. Anything less just wouldn't be Gerstler!
October 14, 2019
3.7/5
very interesting and beautiful at points. i didn't quote it, but "It Was a Splendid Mind" is such an amazing poem. "Penance" as well.
poems & lines I did like:
Sea Foam Palace
I.
Pardon this frontal offensive,
dear chum. Forgive my word-
churn, my drift, the ways this
text message has gotten all frothy.
How was it you became holy
to me? Should I resist, furiously?
Is this your true vistage, shaken free,
glimpses of what underlies
the world we can see?Do not
forget me murmurs something
nibbled by fishes under the sea
II.
I love the way you wear
your face, how you ride this life.
I delight in the sight of your
nervous, inquisitive eyes,
though I try to act otherwise.
Being stoned out of thy mind
only amps up thy fearsome
brain wattage. After dark
you're quicksilvery: wet/
slick//glistening. Don't make
me chase you, dragging
my heavy caresses, a pair of
awkward serrated claws.
Some of us (but not you)
Kissing
Kissing occurs in skirmishes, wallops, or big gulps.
Pressing lips to lips or lips to objects jolts both souls.
Is kissing particular to mammals? Have you watched lizards or insects kiss?
The kiss delivers a long-awaited verdict.
Kissing maps a hazardous passage.
Kissing offers prayers on deliverance from danger, or a prelude to wounding.
Two people kiss at the bottom of a lake, silt swirling around them.
Kissing grips kissers as the coldest winter on record gripped Europe.
Kissing makes plain the body's resolve.
Kissing references a text that no longer exists, which we try to conjure back
into existence by kissing.
Extracts From The Consoler's Handbook
sleepless grief
rises quietly
twice a night
to change its soaked
pajamas
a first lodged in its throat
submissive grief
sips the offered broth
but spits in a napkin
the minute you look away
after fucking in the underbrush
jealous fury and voracious grief
walk slowly home
in opposite directions
their hair full of dead leaves
impatient grief
braids and unbraids
the tablecloth fringe
taps out Morse code
with its loafer toe
sending messages
to the newly dead
the body's a bear trap
while enduring the fat pastor's
kindly insights and pouring him
more coffee
On The Idea The Dead May Live Vicariously Through Us"
gravestones
that vanished
a century ago
now reappear
perpetual loneliness flows
from century to century
from mosque
to churchyard
to synagogue
the living ferment
what our dead were
before immersion
our dead remain forces
we believe ourselves
at the mercy of
today's
brain fizz
musty hungers
raw longing
as we plunge
from moral
or fiscal cliffs
our dead tumble
with us
In Search of Something to Worship,
My Eyes Lighted On You
Wizened was he, body and soul,
even in youth. I'm drawn to men
life has sledgehammered,
sucker punched, and their
faces' rocky topography.
From our first meeting his vistage
was familiar to me. Other faces
formed and burst behind his roughed-up
public one, surfacing like battered cargo
post-shipwreck, or like alternative verdicts
rising in the minds of a tired jury,
or like the stowaway radiance that shone
through his clothes—yes, I said radiance,
though he was mostly composed
of unbuffered fury and sorrow,
fermenting like moonshine within
his body's rickety still. Years later,
he needed to leap, throw himself
from some parapet into the arms
of a confident virgin. Now he's the
invisible guest at all my feasts.
Despite having built a cult around
that man, complete with amulets, altars,
censors, and shrines, despite
my swallowed knowledge, my compliant
defiance, I could not save him.
very interesting and beautiful at points. i didn't quote it, but "It Was a Splendid Mind" is such an amazing poem. "Penance" as well.
poems & lines I did like:
Sea Foam Palace
I.
Pardon this frontal offensive,
dear chum. Forgive my word-
churn, my drift, the ways this
text message has gotten all frothy.
How was it you became holy
to me? Should I resist, furiously?
Is this your true vistage, shaken free,
glimpses of what underlies
the world we can see?Do not
forget me murmurs something
nibbled by fishes under the sea
II.
I love the way you wear
your face, how you ride this life.
I delight in the sight of your
nervous, inquisitive eyes,
though I try to act otherwise.
Being stoned out of thy mind
only amps up thy fearsome
brain wattage. After dark
you're quicksilvery: wet/
slick//glistening. Don't make
me chase you, dragging
my heavy caresses, a pair of
awkward serrated claws.
Some of us (but not you)
Kissing
Kissing occurs in skirmishes, wallops, or big gulps.
Pressing lips to lips or lips to objects jolts both souls.
Is kissing particular to mammals? Have you watched lizards or insects kiss?
The kiss delivers a long-awaited verdict.
Kissing maps a hazardous passage.
Kissing offers prayers on deliverance from danger, or a prelude to wounding.
Two people kiss at the bottom of a lake, silt swirling around them.
Kissing grips kissers as the coldest winter on record gripped Europe.
Kissing makes plain the body's resolve.
Kissing references a text that no longer exists, which we try to conjure back
into existence by kissing.
Extracts From The Consoler's Handbook
sleepless grief
rises quietly
twice a night
to change its soaked
pajamas
a first lodged in its throat
submissive grief
sips the offered broth
but spits in a napkin
the minute you look away
after fucking in the underbrush
jealous fury and voracious grief
walk slowly home
in opposite directions
their hair full of dead leaves
impatient grief
braids and unbraids
the tablecloth fringe
taps out Morse code
with its loafer toe
sending messages
to the newly dead
the body's a bear trap
while enduring the fat pastor's
kindly insights and pouring him
more coffee
On The Idea The Dead May Live Vicariously Through Us"
gravestones
that vanished
a century ago
now reappear
perpetual loneliness flows
from century to century
from mosque
to churchyard
to synagogue
the living ferment
what our dead were
before immersion
our dead remain forces
we believe ourselves
at the mercy of
today's
brain fizz
musty hungers
raw longing
as we plunge
from moral
or fiscal cliffs
our dead tumble
with us
In Search of Something to Worship,
My Eyes Lighted On You
Wizened was he, body and soul,
even in youth. I'm drawn to men
life has sledgehammered,
sucker punched, and their
faces' rocky topography.
From our first meeting his vistage
was familiar to me. Other faces
formed and burst behind his roughed-up
public one, surfacing like battered cargo
post-shipwreck, or like alternative verdicts
rising in the minds of a tired jury,
or like the stowaway radiance that shone
through his clothes—yes, I said radiance,
though he was mostly composed
of unbuffered fury and sorrow,
fermenting like moonshine within
his body's rickety still. Years later,
he needed to leap, throw himself
from some parapet into the arms
of a confident virgin. Now he's the
invisible guest at all my feasts.
Despite having built a cult around
that man, complete with amulets, altars,
censors, and shrines, despite
my swallowed knowledge, my compliant
defiance, I could not save him.
July 13, 2025
I’m rating it 4.5. This is the first poetry book (2015) I’ve read of Amy Gerstler.
There are great examples of use of personification, imagery and metaphor throughout. Many of her poems have a sensual quality. I’ve picked the first lines of her poem Debris Trail as an example of her writing:
“The world hikes up her skirts and her
underthings are so lovely! Lingerie dazzling
and jagged as a frozen waterfall, complete
with swallowed uproar…”
In her poem, In Search of Something to Worship My Eyes Lighted On You, the following showed her unique use of language for imagery:
“…I’m drawn to men
life has sledgehammered,
sucker punched, and their
faces’ rocky topography.
From our first meeting his visage
was familiar to me. Other faces
formed and burst beneath his roughed-up
public one, surfacing like battered cargo
post-shipwreck, or like alternative verdicts
rising in the minds of a tired jury,…”
I’ll end by adding a short bio: Amy Gerstler is an accomplished award-winning published poet. In 2010 she served as the guest editor for The Best American Poetry. As of this writing, 2025, she has more than eleven books of published poetry. Scattered at Sea, her 2015 collection reviewed here, was longlisted for the National Book Award.
She is currently a professor for the MFA Writing Program at University of California, Irvine
There are great examples of use of personification, imagery and metaphor throughout. Many of her poems have a sensual quality. I’ve picked the first lines of her poem Debris Trail as an example of her writing:
“The world hikes up her skirts and her
underthings are so lovely! Lingerie dazzling
and jagged as a frozen waterfall, complete
with swallowed uproar…”
In her poem, In Search of Something to Worship My Eyes Lighted On You, the following showed her unique use of language for imagery:
“…I’m drawn to men
life has sledgehammered,
sucker punched, and their
faces’ rocky topography.
From our first meeting his visage
was familiar to me. Other faces
formed and burst beneath his roughed-up
public one, surfacing like battered cargo
post-shipwreck, or like alternative verdicts
rising in the minds of a tired jury,…”
I’ll end by adding a short bio: Amy Gerstler is an accomplished award-winning published poet. In 2010 she served as the guest editor for The Best American Poetry. As of this writing, 2025, she has more than eleven books of published poetry. Scattered at Sea, her 2015 collection reviewed here, was longlisted for the National Book Award.
She is currently a professor for the MFA Writing Program at University of California, Irvine
April 15, 2020
There's a (retrograde? tired? dull?) grief to this collection that reminds me Sharon Olds' Stag's Leap. Neither collection is BAD, but neither collection does anything remarkable either. It's difficult for me to pin down exactly what it is about these collections that hits me as (for lack of a better word) domesticated. There's the slice-of-life soccer-mom-controversial sexuality and silliness, the rusted hinge between these tones and the real grief that select poems express, the monologic of each poem.
I think it's telling to me that I keep my eyes open for Gerstler's use of parentheticals. When they appear, as in the final line of "Prehistoric Porn Film," they reorient the entirety of the poem. It's in her asides, when she's not dashing off witticisms and merely-though-admittedly interesting turns of phrase, that she turns her own poem inside out. It's not lost on me that "Prehistoric Porn Film" is also one of the few poems that feels independently strong despite seeming secondary to the whole of Scattered at Sea: Gerstler's parenthesis are the detritus of a grief she chose to spackle over.
It's like she bricked in a hammered Hamlet.
I think it's telling to me that I keep my eyes open for Gerstler's use of parentheticals. When they appear, as in the final line of "Prehistoric Porn Film," they reorient the entirety of the poem. It's in her asides, when she's not dashing off witticisms and merely-though-admittedly interesting turns of phrase, that she turns her own poem inside out. It's not lost on me that "Prehistoric Porn Film" is also one of the few poems that feels independently strong despite seeming secondary to the whole of Scattered at Sea: Gerstler's parenthesis are the detritus of a grief she chose to spackle over.
It's like she bricked in a hammered Hamlet.
February 9, 2019
More accurately a 3.5. Gerstler is as quirky and original as I remember from her collection "Dearest Creature", although there were some problematic bits in a few poems that rubbed me the wrong way and didn't click with me personally. I really liked how well-organized and thoughtfully structured "Scattered at Sea" was and for the wide net Gerstler casts on this subject. Still one of my favourite poets though now a bit more problematic/nuanced than I thought before. One of the things that's remained consistent, however, is my love for the whimsy, originality, and even sheer bizarreness that Gerstler injects her poems with. I should probably get better acquainted with her work to see if my opinion has simply changes or if there is just more to Gerstler that I haven't discovered yet.
July 14, 2022
3.5 stars. For the first chunk of this book, I was like goodness, this woman is VERY horny. Lots and lots of poems about sex.
The tone takes a turn after about the first third with more poems about womanhood, etc. It's the last third of the book that really hit me hard though. Gerstler dives deep into themes of grief and loss, and some of the poems really got me.
Particular favorites:
"Extracts from the Consoler's Handbook"
"He Sleeps Every Afternoon"
"On Buying a Walker"
Those three in particular I went back and read over and over. They are all three melancholy, and two are downright sad, but they hurt in the most delicious way. I will definitely be adding more of her work to my list.
The tone takes a turn after about the first third with more poems about womanhood, etc. It's the last third of the book that really hit me hard though. Gerstler dives deep into themes of grief and loss, and some of the poems really got me.
Particular favorites:
"Extracts from the Consoler's Handbook"
"He Sleeps Every Afternoon"
"On Buying a Walker"
Those three in particular I went back and read over and over. They are all three melancholy, and two are downright sad, but they hurt in the most delicious way. I will definitely be adding more of her work to my list.
June 13, 2024
A collection of poems about animals, climate, and relationships.
from Bon Courage: "Why are the woods so alluring? A forest appears / to a young girl one morning as she combs / the dreams from her hair. The trees rustle / and whisper, shimmer and hiss."
from Curing of the Party Responsible for Her Suffering: "My his scalp sizzle, blister, and itch. / May his nose run like the Amazon. / May his lips swell to melons."
from What I Did With Your Ashes: "Shook the box like a maraca. // Stood around like a dope in my punch-colored dress, clutching your box / to my chest. // Opened your plastic receptacle, the size of a jack-in-the-box. But instead / of gaudy stripes, your box is sober-suit blue, hymnal blue."
from Bon Courage: "Why are the woods so alluring? A forest appears / to a young girl one morning as she combs / the dreams from her hair. The trees rustle / and whisper, shimmer and hiss."
from Curing of the Party Responsible for Her Suffering: "My his scalp sizzle, blister, and itch. / May his nose run like the Amazon. / May his lips swell to melons."
from What I Did With Your Ashes: "Shook the box like a maraca. // Stood around like a dope in my punch-colored dress, clutching your box / to my chest. // Opened your plastic receptacle, the size of a jack-in-the-box. But instead / of gaudy stripes, your box is sober-suit blue, hymnal blue."
June 19, 2017
This collection didn't really move me. There were some beautiful poems about grief ("Extracts from the Consoler's Handbook" comes to mind) and some that were just funny ("On Wanting to Be Male" and the line Fascinated by (but not covetous of) their crepey ball-skin, crenulated like brains, or walnut hulls, or iguana hide on a rich dude's shoes) but overall I was left feeling at loose ends, somehow. Gerstler's style is nimble and energetic, full of imagery and phrases that I wouldn't have pieced together, but sometimes the emotions comes at a remove despite what I can only describe as something youthful. I think this is one I need to sit with and then reread in a day or so.
October 31, 2024
as someone who’s fairly new getting into poetry, i don’t think this was bad and wouldn’t say so, however it was very disjunct and i did not feel a connection to it. it rubs me in a wrong way that i can’t quite describe, it seems like almost zoophilia. literally picked this up in the school library during my free block because the power’s out and got about 3/4 though, was not expecting it to be so… freaky 😳
maybe i didn’t spend enough time on it but the only poem i enjoyed out of this was womanishness.
maybe i didn’t spend enough time on it but the only poem i enjoyed out of this was womanishness.
August 29, 2019
Gerstler has given to the world of poetry sense amidst chaos, while many lines are quick witted, and seemingly all over the place - she pulls reads back from the fray just in time to make us have the ah-ha! Moment we deserve. Gerstler uses a keen sense of the absurd and ingenious, and calls humans out for how we attempt order in disorder. Funny, thoughtful, sharp collection that will make you think just enough.
September 5, 2017
I want to live in the sounds of these poems. They are indeed a sea. I love the lists of insults and of loves, the hymns, the sexiness, the grief, and the things of the earth including sassafras. (I also love Gail Swanlund's illustrations that are as delicate and slimy as the poems.)
(Personal note: my poems want to be this light and rich.)
(Personal note: my poems want to be this light and rich.)
June 24, 2021
Poetic writers can construct lines putting together words most of us would never consider belonging together.
Amy Gerstler accomplishes this feat regularly.
There are poems in this collection that I enjoyed because they were funny, clever, smart, erotic, imaginative.
And to think I found this book while browsing at the library, having never heard of Amy Gerstler.
Glad I did.
Amy Gerstler accomplishes this feat regularly.
There are poems in this collection that I enjoyed because they were funny, clever, smart, erotic, imaginative.
And to think I found this book while browsing at the library, having never heard of Amy Gerstler.
Glad I did.
February 26, 2025
Honestly nothing in here stuck out at me (I will say I was not here for the use of creamy meat or pussy like mustard but to each their own). I’m not here to criticize though, as poetry is subjective and comes from the heart. Someone may like these but it just wasn’t for me. The stars aren’t a representation of the quality of the work, but instead how much I enjoyed it
December 29, 2017
The first two sections of the collection were alright, and I was beginning to have doubts, but by the third section I really enjoyed it. The fourth section was my absolute favorite, and it was a splendid mind will stick with me for a long time.
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