Medicine

by Amy Gerstler

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.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Known 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.

Reviews

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a poem in here in which a woman puts earrings on a deer. I get such a kick out of that.

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd but powerful

Gerstler remains playful and surreal as well as lyrical. This collection tends to develop towards drama and persona poems. There are some truly original and odd poems here.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have not read any of Amy Gerstler's work you are missing out. She is in my top 5 poets. Here is a couple of lines from this collection Medicine.

"Limbs and torso distract from the face, which I need to keep in plain sight. I'd hope to honor your body as a whole, but it keeps coming apart and rushing at me." -Lovesickness: a radio play

"I've drunk the birdbath water and licked a leather bible cooked in oil. I've crushed hogs' teeth into tea. I've rinsed my hair in a tin basin a genius has spat in. This morning, after being washed and dressed by orphans, I drank iridescent vinegar pearls were dissolved in....." -Medicine

Here are my favorites from this dark and gritty at sometimes collection of Amy Gerstler.

-To a Young Woman in a Coma
-The Bear-Boy of Lithuania
-A Naturalist's Wife
-Loss
-Lovesickness: a radio from four disembodied voices
-Word Salad
-Medicine

[Nicco Mele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the opening poem, "Prayer for Jackson", and I also love the poem, "Bear Boy of Lithuania". The second half of the book is a strange drama of sorts that I don't care for.

[Liz Scheid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love her!

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few months ago I read and loved Amy Gerstler's Dearest Creature. So my expectations may have been a little too high for this, the second book of Gerstler's poetry I have been able to find and read.

There are still some excellent and memorable poems in this collection, such as The Bear Boy of Lithuania, Address to a broom, Things that loosen the tongue and even Scorched Cinderella, A severe lack of holiday spirit, To my husband on the first anniversary of his mother's death, Fugitive color or A sage in retirement. However for me most of the other poems in the collection such as the radio play Lovesickness "...for four disembodied voices" or The bride goes wild lacked cohesion and had a casual and desperate strung together feeling which did not manage to hold my attention or left me cold and disappointed.

Perhaps it is that what I most enjoy of Gerstler's poetry is when she is in full flight of whimsy or when she lets drop an unexpected, potent, precise, bittersweet and poignant metaphor or analogy like that at the end of A sage in retirement:

People claim to hear faint strains of music in his presence, as though he were an old radio, tuned down very low.

[Tyler Ookami]

Gerstler's poems mostly just hone in on a kind of limited scope of stereotypical Girl Autism topics: dogs, seances, botany/zoology. But I think that Tumblr girl aspect gives her work a queasy thrill that I don't quite get out of her male cohorts in the turn of the millennium transgressive lit scene because you truly are playing Russian roulette here over whether a poem is going to be a twee-without-irony poem about the beauty of snow or grilled cheese sandwiches or about dead baby juice giving you fuck powers. Nicholas in Lovesickness is such a literally me fr. I love the part in Nightfall about hyperfocusing on an old guy's ear fungus at a funeral. So real.

[Janel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gerstler's poems in Medicine are a wonderful balance of playful, unique, meditative, and honest. The poems in this collection inspire for imitation and writing exercises with their tendency toward ode and persona, their ability to remind the reader how much fun writing can be, and by inviting us in.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it! Not entirely my cup of tea, but there was art here. Less poems as a whole worked for me here than in some other poetry I've read, but there were more great lines and sentences than you can shake a stick at.

[Kristina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult to swallow.

[Maughn Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her poems are a captivating blend of profundity and "Word Salad."

[Brendan]

Favorites:
"Tidings"
"Nightfall"
"Spring Tonic"

It was my sister's touch
that healed him as much
as the dozen jellied ducks'
tongues he ingested.
- "Medicine"