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3.58 AVERAGE
3.58 AVERAGE
emotional
medium-paced
the illustration were lovely was not expecting so much erotic imagery in the beginning but really enjoyed the latter end of the book
Maybe this collection was not meant to be read during a sleepless night.
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
very queer, very Jewish, very mentally ill. definitely my cup of tea, some poems felt skippable but most really resonated. a good handful felt very impactful and made me slow down and take in the poetry
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.
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.
reflective
medium-paced
Gerstler's poetry was a mixed affair for me. Some I absolutely loved, notably "A Sane Life," "Extracts from the Consoler's Handbook," and "It Was a Splendid Mind." Her poems on grief and Alzheimer's felt so real to me, by turns absurd and funny and blazingly mundane. I was surprised to find that her style reminded me of no one's poetry so much as my own, especially some of the more rambling ones like "A Sane Life" - "We swallow sunlight / in pills, outlive our wits, and ultimately / get shunted off to rest homes tended / by underpaid strangers." Or "On the Idea the Dead May Live Vicariously Through Us" - "what shall remain / of the hand-me-down earth / for the meek to claim." She seems to draw on biblical and environmental and socialist themes that I often find myself writing about, too. But then there were poems that felt unpolished, thrown in (like the somewhat kitschy "Account of Former Lives). I felt that some sections of this book were both too preachy and too grotesque, though I think this might have been the point, like the modernist painting at the museum that is just the right shade of pinkish red to sicken us with the thought of flayed flesh...
Unfortunately, I couldn't really connect with this one. It has some nice lines, like "Is a child an exegesis of parental texts?" in "Childlessness" (24) and "Try, for once in your life, to really / wake up.
Refill with clean, soapy water" in "Penance" (68-69), but there's not a single poem I think I'll remember a week from now. I'm not sure I like Gerstler's voice.
Read the review on my blog here.
Refill with clean, soapy water" in "Penance" (68-69), but there's not a single poem I think I'll remember a week from now. I'm not sure I like Gerstler's voice.
Read the review on my blog here.