Amy Gerstler

“Most people who write and publish poetry teach or do something else.”

“Thin ribbons of fear snake bluely through you like a system of rivers. We need a cloudburst or soothing landscape fast, to still this panic. Maybe a field of dracaena, or a vast stand of sugar pines—generous, gum-yielding trees—to fill our minds with vegetable wonder and keep dread at bay.”

“Film and TV are the most popular mediums in America. Literature and poetry are possibly the most under-recognized art forms.”

“Only recently have I realized that being different is not something you want to hide or squelch or suppress.”

“I don't write to create performance material; I write to make books.”

“Disaster, to me, means in some big or small way, things going wrong. And that's obviously a matter of perception, right? Let's say your puppy chewed up all the shoes in your house. She probably had a fine time doing that. In her mind, a red letter day, the highlight of her puppy life.”

“I don't like scaring people off. When I tell people I'm a writer, they look kind of interested. Then I tell them that I write poetry, and they think I'm weird.”

“Like many confused and evolving humans, I live in constant danger of transformation.”

“Love doesn't reside in the heart, anyway. Love resides in the liver along with jaundice.”

“I've always liked wearing black. Hats with veils would suit me just fine.”

“There is an element in some of my work that has to do with being an outsider, feeling like not part of the dominant culture.”

“Fuck You Poem #45Fuck you in slang and conventional English.Fuck you in lost and neglected lingoes.Fuck you hungry and sated; faded, pock marked, and defaced.Fuck you with orange rind, fennel and anchovy paste.Fuck you with rosemary and thyme, and fried green olives on the side.Fuck you humidly and icily.Fuck you farsightedly and blindly.Fuck you nude and draped in stolen finery.Fuck you while cells divide wildly and birds trill.Thank you for barring me from his bedside while he was ill.Fuck you puce and chartreuse.Fuck you postmodern and prehistoric.Fuck you under the influence of opiun, codeine, laudanum, and paregoric.Fuck every real and imagined country you fancied yourself princess of.Fuck you on feast days and fast days, below and above.Fuck you sleepless and shaking for nineteen nights running.Fuck you ugly and fuck you stunning.Fuck you shipwrecked on the barren island of your bed.Fuck you marching in lockstep in the ranks of the dead.Fuck you at low and high tide.And fuck you astride anyone who has the bad luck to fuck you, in dank hallways, bathrooms, or kitchens.Fuck you in gasps and whispered benedictions.And fuck these curses, however heartfelt and true,that bind me, till I forgive you, to you.”

“I think part of being human is learning to roll with the punches, to deal with any kind of personal or professional disaster that might crop up. You have to learn to deal with that stuff or not survive.”

“With contemporary poetry having approximately as many fans outside the immediate field as there are devotees of undergoing knee surgery, any sentient, breathing reader who's genuinely interested in poetry... not scared of it... seems a godsend.”

“One of those quiet types who logs a lot of time in the bedlam of her head, I sometimes need to be startled awake to the fact that the outside world still exists.”

“The human imagination can connect to practically anything.”

“My work is mostly about longing, human relationships, science and children - and a little bit about ghosts and reincarnation.”

“Ideally, I'd love to write poems that intrigued humans across the board: literary folk and academics as well as... dog-walkers, doctors, plumbers, chefs, math professors, jugglers, etc.”

“My main ambition as a teenager was to somehow resurrect the dark-minded writer Franz Kafka and become his girlfriend.”

“I am introverted and a complete klutz.”