Scattered at Sea

Starred review from June 15, 2015
Gerstler (Dearest Creature), winner of the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for Bitter Angel, once again brilliantly amplifies the natural world in this blisteringly humorous 11th collection. Never shy, the poems zip between black comedy and earthy odes: “Regret clogs arteries. We stuff ourselves// with bread and sex. Then ash provides/ the most natural last transport// imaginable.” Each of the book’s five sections presents new speculations, references, and philosophies—a section titled “Womanish” provides distinctive gender commentary by cross-hatching social norms with absurdities: “A man’s sweat can get you pregnant. Beware./ Women have been fertilized by animal bites, dreams,/ swallowing insects, seawater, eating beans.” Gerstler’s dextrous poems work as satire as well as truthful reflections of humanness, often beautifully crushing in their honesty: “what shall remain/ of the hand-me-down earth/ for the meek to claim/ when lovers of blood sport/ have finished with it/ only a welling up/ of that last gasp: vapors of vapors.” What is most compelling is Gerstler’s dynamic consideration of spirituality, afterworlds, and reincarnations—dense subjects spellbound with unexpected brevity: “In one life I was a monk who won a newborn in a bet/ In this life Lord knows what is to happen yet.” Gerstler’s latest proves to be delightful, surreal and well-rounded book.

May 1, 2015

"Pardon this frontal offensive,/ dear chum. Forgive my word-/ churn, my drift," says award-winning poet Gerstler in her opening poem, displaying her talent for threading heightened language with colloquial, offbeat wit (see, for instance, 2009's Dearest Creature). Her energy is high octane, sometimes even gleeful, as she surveys our scattered ways of being on this "hand-me-down earth." The frank sensuality--"thighs sticky, leakage streaked/ matted fur, meaty reek" starts the poem "Prehistoric Porn Film"--is a short leap to the just-missed closeness of men and women, individually and as genders. "I'd like to be you,/ for example,...were it granted/ me to test-drive being a man," says one poem, while another declares, "The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly/ drippy prissy pouty fuss of us." Even the more somber section "What I Did with Your Ashes" has its black humor, with the title poem opening "Shook the box like a maraca." But it says of the ashes, "Tasted them. You've gained a statue's flavor, like licking the pyramids, or/ kissing sandstone shoulders. I mean boulders," and suddenly one senses that beneath the dazzle here is a fierce, nearly frantic determination to hang on through life's bumpy ride. VERDICT Accomplished and involving; for all poetry collections--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

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