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Synopsis
Book by Gerstler, Amy
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Like the clairvoyant speaker in one of the many dramatic monologues in this imaginative collection, Gerstler (True Bride ) seems to have been "born without immunity / to this din in the air: / the sad humming of the long lost." Her characters inhabit the fringes of society: they are saints ("the more neurotic, unattractive / and accident-prone, the better"), homeless men, a sleepwalker and a hypnotist, and the "bitter angel" of the title poem, who unceremoniously appears in a "tinny, nickel-and-dime light." Innocents all, these would-be seers bear the burden of a hypersensitivity to the world around them and, because of it, share a kind of grace. For the poet, redemption seems to lie in the essential resilience of humanity, and in the belief in an elusive, Edenic landscape where "for every hurt / there is a leaf to cure it." Gerstler balances classical allusion with bold experimentation in voice, form and content, creating a tension that gives her work an urgent, honest edge.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Bitter Angel
Seller: The Haunted Bookshop, LLC, Iowa City, IA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Clean, bright pages; no owners' marks; soft coverhas a row of short, shallow creases at the bottom left front, a tiny fold at the top right front corner, and tiny spots of surface wear at other corners; otherwise very well-kept. 79pp. Winner of the 1990 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Seller Inventory # 00090651