Ghost Girl

Sly and sophisticated, direct, playful, and profound, Amy Gerstler's new collection highlights her distinctive poetic style. In thirty-seven poems, using a variety of dramatic voices and visual techniques, she finds meaning in unexpected places, from a tour of a doll hospital to an ad for a CD of Beethoven symphonies to an earthy exploration of toast. Gerstler's abiding interests—in love and mourning, in science and pseudoscience, in the idea of an afterlife, in seances and magic—are all represented here. Entertaining and erudite, complex yet accessible, these poems will enhance Gerstler's reputation as an important contemporary poet.

The New York Times

Everyone gets his or her say in Gerstler's poems, from a philosophical fetus to the oracle of Delphi incarnated as a teenage girl. At their best, these playful, showy monologues offer a musical thrill...—Emily Nussbaum

Amy Gerstler is a writer of nonfiction, poetry, and journalism whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including the Paris Review, New Yorker, and Best American Poetry. Her book Bitter Angel won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.