Is This My Final Form?
Penguin Poets
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Is This My Final Form?
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Narrated by:
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Amy Gerstler
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By:
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Amy Gerstler
About this listen
A poet renowned for her “wit and complexity” (Poetry Foundation) explores the endless evolution and malleability of life on earth in her most curious, inventive collection to date
Aren’t we all shape-shifters? Is any animal, vegetable, or mineral—even a commonplace object—what it seems to be at any given moment? Who isn’t juggling constant transformations, conflicting roles, changing loyalties, loves, perceptions, and selves, all while being pummeled by shifting devotions, emotions, and obsessions? Do even the dead continue to evolve in surprising ways?
Reveling in these questions, Gerstler’s latest protean poetry collection includes loose sonnets, shapely praise of Mae West, the lament of an actor who can’t shed his costume, dramatic monologues, whiffs of gender slippage, a love lyric to the bride of Frankenstein, and a ten-minute play.
©2025 Amy Gerstler (P)2025 Penguin AudioCritic reviews
“In this collection Gerstler works with themes of transformation, transition, and becoming, all with wit and unexpectedness.” —Lit Hub, “Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025”
“Readers can expect irreverence, wit . . . and a tone that feels just about right for heading into 2025. As ‘Wound Care Instructions’ opens, ‘This is the inside-out of the sublime.’” —Lit Hub
“Amy Gerstler’s poetry is effortlessly brilliant, funny, tender, and wise. I read her poems and feel the pleasures and pains of being an imperfect being in this screwy, imperfect world. This book of poems might be the best so far by one of our finest poets.” —Matthew Zapruder, author of I Love Hearing Your Dreams and Story of a Poem