Useful Junk

Useful Junk

by Erika Meitner
Useful Junk

Useful Junk

by Erika Meitner

Paperback

$17.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Thursday, April 4
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

A master of documentary poetry, Erika Meitner takes up the question of desire and intimacy in her latest collection of poems.

In her previous five collections of poetry, Erika Meitner has established herself as one of America’s most incisive observers, cherished for her remarkable ability to temper catastrophe with tenderness. In her newest collection Useful Junk, Meitner considers what it means to be a sexual being in a world that sees women as invisible—as mothers, customers, passengers, worshippers, wives. These poems render our changing bodies as real and alive, shaped by the sense memories of long-lost lovers and the still thrilling touch of a spouse after years of parenthood, affirming that we are made of every intimate moment we have ever had. Letter poems to a younger poet interspersed throughout the collection question desire itself and how new technologies—Uber, sexting, Instagram—are reframing self-image and shifting the ratios of risk and reward in erotic encounters.

With dauntless vulnerability, Meitner travels a world of strip malls, supermarkets, and subway platforms, remaining porous and open to the world, always returning to the intimacies rooted deep within the self as a shout against the dying earth. Boldly affirming that pleasure is a vital form of knowledge, Useful Junk reminds us that our selves are made real and beautiful by our embodied experiences and that our desire is what keeps us alive.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781950774531
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date: 04/05/2022
Series: American Poets Continuum Series , #191
Pages: 104
Sales rank: 630,635
Product dimensions: 6.80(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Erika Meitner is the author of six books of poems, including Useful Junk (BOA, 2022); Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA, 2018), which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Copia (BOA, 2014); and Ideal Cities (HarperCollins, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry series winner. Meitner’s poems have been anthologized widely, and have appeared in publications including Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry, and The Believer. Other honors include fellowships from MacDowell, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Bethany Arts Community, and Blue Mountain Center. She was also the 2015 US-UK Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s UniversityBelfast. Meitner lives in rural southwest Virginia and is currently a Professor of English at Virginia Tech.

Table of Contents

I would like to be the you in someone's poem 9

Letter in the Time of Junkmail 11

Seine with Airplane Voyeurism & References to Your Body 13

The Seeming Impenetrability of the Space Between 16

All the Past and Futures 18

Seven Fragments About Christmas and an Episode of Night Swimming 20

Medium Adam 25 22

Eternity Now 25

Elegy with Lo-Fi Selfie 27

From this thought a hazy question 29

Nude Selfie Ode 31

Aubade with Projector 34

Are You Popular? (1947) 35

Beyond Which 37

Letter to Hillary on the Radical Hospitality of the Body 39

Invitation to Tender 41

The bureau of reclamation 43

This Volatile Taxonomy 45

A Temple of the Spirit 47

All the Secrets and Holes 49

Now That I Can See the Light 51

Swift Trucks 53

Ghost Eden 56

Missing Parts 58

An Occupation of Loss 61

A Brief Ontological Investigation 63

The Practice of Depicting Matter as It Passes from Radiance to Decomposition 65

Letter from around the way 67

Message from the Interior 69

Smith Street, 1998 70

What Follows Is a Reconstruction Based on the Best Available Evidence 71

We used to go to the Bulgarian Bar but not together 73

The Replication Machine 74

Welcome to Fear City: A Survival Guide 76

The Last Decade of the 20th Century 78

Come Correct 79

Remember Me as a Time of Day 80

The experience we are thrust into 82

Letter on Gratitude 84

My List of True Facts 85

Beyond Which 87

Notes 91

Acknowledgments 94

About the Author 97

Colophon 104

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews