Book Review: “Dearest Creature” by Amy Gerstler
I love twisted poetry, so I love this. That could be the whole review except there is much more to look at here in this collection of mysteriously concocted verses.
Speaking of twisted, the collection opens with five-and-a-half lines about death by boiling in sixteenth century Europe – just the thing to invite the reader in for a pleasurable poetic experience, wouldn’t you say? “Oh, this is awful,” I said as I continued reading, avidly. The poem is revealed as a letter of love and encouragement to a six year old. Okay, I’m hooked.
Early on there is poem entitled, “Sonnet.” Other than fourteen lines, at first glance the piece seems to have no resemblance to its namesake until one perceives a most gentle rhyme scheme of sorts: vowel sounds couched in consonants both hard and soft that are sprinkled with something like consistency throughout the poem. Later in the book there is the poem “Chanson” that contains no French and any song-like rhythm is stopped dead by the fifth line that begins, “it, and… “ Within most of poems the idea of form is delicately echoed, with overtones of a deep knowledge of poetic form allowed to have only a subliminal influence on verse that it truly free.
“Chanson” is actually a lovely poem sort of about walking the dog in the rain while on drugs. Who could ask for better? It is in the section of the book called “Creaturely” that features poems about insects, birds, animals and people. Many of the poems are about people and others that are not about people are dedicated to people.
The book is divided into four sections whose titles rhyme: Refugee, Creaturely, Maidenly, and Elegy. Each has more or less of a concentration. Refugee is somewhat about displacement or being transplanted; Creaturely is loosely about animals or the animal aspects of humans; Maidenly is more strongly about being female; and Elegy is as it is named, poems for the dead. Each poem treats its focus with an amused and loving objectivity that teases out gorgeous layers of meaning. This editor found reading this book an undiluted pleasure.
“Dearest Creature” is a book aimed at the human existence, as suggested by this excerpt from the opening poem, “For My Niece Sidney, Age Six”:
“… world is acted out differently / for each one of us by the puppet theater / of our senses… “
This poem, like the book in which it resides, treats us to the viewpoint of a unique eye that surveys the landscape of life – food, drink, growing, aging, mating, loving and death – with a tendency to see poetry simply everywhere. So Ms. Gerstler defines the term, ‘poet,’ for us, and does it very well indeed.
“Dearest Creature” ©2009 Amy Gerstler, pub. Penguin Poets