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.

Amy Gerstler

Categorized in : Me Day Life Time

People hit the sauce in a big way all winter. Amidst blizzards they wrestle unsuccessfully with the dark comedy of their lives, laughter trapped in their frigid gizzards. Meanwhile, the mercury just plummets, like a migrating duck blasted out of the sky by some hunter in a cap with fur earflaps.

Amy Gerstler

laughter dark winter

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

Amy Gerstler

liver jaundice heart

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.

Amy Gerstler

snakes vegetables fear

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

Amy Gerstler

hide you being-different want

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.

Amy Gerstler

outside scared fans poetry

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.

Amy Gerstler

well write professors love

The human imagination can connect to practically anything.

Amy Gerstler

connect human anything imagination

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.

Amy Gerstler

look think poetry people

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.

Amy Gerstler

feeling like work culture

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

Amy Gerstler

something teach poetry people

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

Amy Gerstler

poetry literature america art

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

Amy Gerstler

ghosts work science children

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

Amy Gerstler

books write performance create

I am introverted and a complete klutz.

Amy Gerstler

complete am i-am introverted

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.

Amy Gerstler

think you disaster learning

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

Amy Gerstler

somehow become girlfriend ambition

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

Amy Gerstler

live like transformation confused

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

Amy Gerstler

suit me always black

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.

Amy Gerstler

time sometimes quiet world