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 pummelled by shifting devotions, emotions, and obsessions? Do even the dead continue to evolve in surprising ways? Revelling 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.
