About the Author

Amy Gerstler has won acclaim for complex yet accessible poetry that is by turns extravagant, subversive, surreal, and playful.

About the Collection

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.

The Themes

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.