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Copia
Erika Meitner's fourth book grapples with the widespread implications of commercialism and over-consumption, particularly in exurban America. Documentary poems originally commissioned by Virginia Quarterly Review examine the now-bankrupt city of Detroit, once the thriving heart of the American Dream. Meitner probes the hulking ruins of office buildings, tract housing, superstores, construction sites, and freeways--exposing a vacuous world of decay and abandonment--while holding out hope for re-birth from ashes.
Because it is an uninhabited place, because it
makes me hollow, I pried open the pages of
the houses blanked out, factories
absorbed back into ghetto palms and scrub-
oak, piles of tires, heaps of cement block.
Vines knock and enter through shattered
drop-ceilings, glassless windows. Ragwort
cracks the street's asphalt to unsolvable
puzzles.
Erika Meitner was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review , Ploughshares , Tin House , The Best American Poetry 2011 , Kenyon Review , and elsewhere. She is associate professor of English at Virginia Tech.
Because it is an uninhabited place, because it
makes me hollow, I pried open the pages of
the houses blanked out, factories
absorbed back into ghetto palms and scrub-
oak, piles of tires, heaps of cement block.
Vines knock and enter through shattered
drop-ceilings, glassless windows. Ragwort
cracks the street's asphalt to unsolvable
puzzles.
Erika Meitner was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review , Ploughshares , Tin House , The Best American Poetry 2011 , Kenyon Review , and elsewhere. She is associate professor of English at Virginia Tech.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published September 9, 2014
4 people are currently reading
96 people want to read
About the author
Erika Meitner
13 books41 followersErika Meitner is the author of 6 books of poems, including Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls (Anhinga Press, 2011); Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner; Copia (BOA Editions, 2014); and Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), which was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, and the winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. Her most recent book, Useful Junk, is due out from BOA Editions in April of 2022. Her work has appeared most recently in The New Yorker, The Believer,VQR, Orion, The New Republic and elsewhere. She is currently a professor of English at Virginia Tech.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 21, 2017
What a collection! Meitner's work is on the radar now, and I will seek out more.
I was looking for a theme here and didn't really find one, it's this beautiful mash of trailer parks, Yiddish, Detroit, religious overtones, and verb conjugations.
Highlights:
To Whom It May Concern:
And After the Ark
Apologetics
Porto, Portare, Portavi, Portatus
Maple Ridge
Yiddishland
Wal*Mart Supercenter
I was looking for a theme here and didn't really find one, it's this beautiful mash of trailer parks, Yiddish, Detroit, religious overtones, and verb conjugations.
Highlights:
To Whom It May Concern:
And After the Ark
Apologetics
Porto, Portare, Portavi, Portatus
Maple Ridge
Yiddishland
Wal*Mart Supercenter
May 9, 2016
I met Erika Meitner when I as in an MFA program a few years after she released her first collection, but before her second. This was about a decade ago and we were talking to her for a few minutes about books--such as when one should probably read "The Catcher in the Rye"--I noticed she had an ability to draw insight and even spiritual connections out of the banal and exhaustive. This book continues to prove to that this was a valid observation.
This book feels Whitman-esque in its cataloguing and often breathless lines, Meitner incorporates Detroit, Virginia, Niagara Falls, the Bronx and the ghosts of various Walmart's with bits of Christian and Hebrew theology, the intimacies of beginning a family, and the frustrations of clerical and academic life. Meitner is serious without being overly solemn, sometimes sexy, sometimes even a bit gross, and often cracking a sly smile in the middle of a poet. A strong showing for her fourth collection.
This book feels Whitman-esque in its cataloguing and often breathless lines, Meitner incorporates Detroit, Virginia, Niagara Falls, the Bronx and the ghosts of various Walmart's with bits of Christian and Hebrew theology, the intimacies of beginning a family, and the frustrations of clerical and academic life. Meitner is serious without being overly solemn, sometimes sexy, sometimes even a bit gross, and often cracking a sly smile in the middle of a poet. A strong showing for her fourth collection.
October 4, 2014
Favorite poem in the collection: "Interrobang" ("which is exactly the shape of naked John Lennon / wrapped around clothed Yoko Ono")
Favorite sentences in the collection: "We had hallelujah / billboards. We had industrial rust." (from "Terra Nullius")
Ending that made me gasp and say, yes, yes: "In / the image of plenty we created them. / Because though this world is changing, / we will remain the same: abundant and / impossible to fill." (from "Retail Space Available")
Lines I'd like to co-opt for use as an email signature: "I understand / the task is important, but I do not / want to be part of this committee." (from "To Whom It May Concern")
Overall, the tone and themes of the book reminded me of: LaToya Ruby Frazier's Born By a River
Bummed that: I missed the Rumpus chat with Erika. So many questions I wanted to ask!
Favorite sentences in the collection: "We had hallelujah / billboards. We had industrial rust." (from "Terra Nullius")
Ending that made me gasp and say, yes, yes: "In / the image of plenty we created them. / Because though this world is changing, / we will remain the same: abundant and / impossible to fill." (from "Retail Space Available")
Lines I'd like to co-opt for use as an email signature: "I understand / the task is important, but I do not / want to be part of this committee." (from "To Whom It May Concern")
Overall, the tone and themes of the book reminded me of: LaToya Ruby Frazier's Born By a River
Bummed that: I missed the Rumpus chat with Erika. So many questions I wanted to ask!
March 19, 2015
Meitner brings a wide net to this project, mingling the personal and the political through deft use of beautifully discrete (and tragic) syntax: that of the Jewish diaspora, the post-industrial exurbs of our new American century, and the dramas and small confidences of family life. Her engagement with each of these styles of thought/talk marks her interest in the copia, or plenty, if you want to get all Whitman about it, of living in the here and now, but her deft touch for the people behind the words and word-styles (a mysterious but totally believable toddler, a litany of voices from the ever-present past as well as contemporary Detroit) make this collection more than the sum of its disparate voices. While I am new to her work, I eagerly await whatever Erika Meitner comes up with next.
August 16, 2014
This is my favorite collection of Meitner's to date. The poems are fresh, resonant, and skilfully crafted. They transport you to Detroit, Virginia, Niagara Falls, the Bronx, and various Wal-Marts across the nation but each is spoken by a familiar, steady voice.
As expected, my faith in verse has been restored.
As expected, my faith in verse has been restored.
April 7, 2020
Copia's poems have an inner hollowness. Not empty like a balloon, ditzy and floating off, but like a crab shell after dinner. Their rigidity emphasizes the hollowness of consumerist living through ironic echoes as in the dilapidated Detroit that fills the last portion of the book: without the direction which strong internal commitments provide, American cities fell apart. Just as without strong internal commitments Meitner herself may have fallen apart due to the infertility she also embodies int he last portion. Hence copia: "reproduction" in Medieval Latin, "abundance" in Latin, from co "together" & ops "wealth." A vanquished Walmart is a great place to build atop - loss is like possibility. Much like Walter Benjamin's angel, hope remains - though, moving with our backs turned to it, we may not know the form of hope nor like the shape it takes.
Read
August 17, 2020Great collection. I love this line in particular:
“Daily, we bear the weight of more weight forward;
portare is hardly ever said of a light load.”
“Daily, we bear the weight of more weight forward;
portare is hardly ever said of a light load.”
February 5, 2024
We are a gravitational singularity,
a theory that implicates epistemology, but I am not
rigorous enough in my approach to uncover anything.
-- "Correspondence"
Though this world is changing,
we will remain the same: abundant and
impossible to fill.
-- "Retail Space Available"
The world
we expect to see looks hewn from wood, is maybe two lanes wide,
has readily identifiable produce, and the one we've got has jackknifed itself
on the side of the interstate and keeps skidding. The one we've got has clouds
traveling so fast across the sky it's like they're tied to an electric current.
-- "Walmart Supercenter"
What lives
upon its own substance and dies when it devours
itself?
...
The most
intimate place of all in this city of sadness is the
distance between sounds: testifying pheasants
and wild dogs, amens of saws, amens of
sledgehammers.
-- "The Book of Dissolution"
A city
in decay releases energy: rebar, sirens, razor-
wire, spray paint, a guy pushing a shopping cart
down 2nd Street with a vacuum cleaner in it. Destroy
what destroys you. Then, from the ruins, Hallelujah.
-- "Post-Industrialization"
a theory that implicates epistemology, but I am not
rigorous enough in my approach to uncover anything.
-- "Correspondence"
Though this world is changing,
we will remain the same: abundant and
impossible to fill.
-- "Retail Space Available"
The world
we expect to see looks hewn from wood, is maybe two lanes wide,
has readily identifiable produce, and the one we've got has jackknifed itself
on the side of the interstate and keeps skidding. The one we've got has clouds
traveling so fast across the sky it's like they're tied to an electric current.
-- "Walmart Supercenter"
What lives
upon its own substance and dies when it devours
itself?
...
The most
intimate place of all in this city of sadness is the
distance between sounds: testifying pheasants
and wild dogs, amens of saws, amens of
sledgehammers.
-- "The Book of Dissolution"
A city
in decay releases energy: rebar, sirens, razor-
wire, spray paint, a guy pushing a shopping cart
down 2nd Street with a vacuum cleaner in it. Destroy
what destroys you. Then, from the ruins, Hallelujah.
-- "Post-Industrialization"
July 15, 2016
(Original read August 2015 - Had a longer review which I just lost through some ill-advised right click action)
Think Detroit as apocalyptic landscape of foreclosed houses, rebar crouching in basements, empty parkings lots and burnt out auto-beauties
Think anaphora and list poem of Rust Belt, Big Box stores, carts full of pampers and OJ power and Kool-Aid -
Babies traded for meth in WalMart parking lots, old men stabbed to death in January rain.
View America: billboards for PAYDAY LOANS, GOD BLESS, BANKTUPTCY MAY BE A BLESSING, COME INTO TODAY
DO YOU KNOW JESUS YET
Gun-toting preacher men and their recoil-bruised sons, 12 and juiced on patriotism
Weave in those references to bubbe and her wig, Yizkor Bukh, Holocaust, the lost language of Yiddish when "The people who sang to their children in Yiddish and worked in Yiddish / and made love in Yiddish are nearly all gone. Phantasmic. Heym."
Welcome to America, the beautiful, the blessed, the blighted and Godforsaken
(Not my usual style, but unexpectedly good.)
Terra Nullius
We had hallelujah billboards. We had industrial rust. He put his finger to my lips and I became the wreckage so we could find our way back. We sat like that a long time.
Think Detroit as apocalyptic landscape of foreclosed houses, rebar crouching in basements, empty parkings lots and burnt out auto-beauties
Think anaphora and list poem of Rust Belt, Big Box stores, carts full of pampers and OJ power and Kool-Aid -
Babies traded for meth in WalMart parking lots, old men stabbed to death in January rain.
View America: billboards for PAYDAY LOANS, GOD BLESS, BANKTUPTCY MAY BE A BLESSING, COME INTO TODAY
DO YOU KNOW JESUS YET
Gun-toting preacher men and their recoil-bruised sons, 12 and juiced on patriotism
Weave in those references to bubbe and her wig, Yizkor Bukh, Holocaust, the lost language of Yiddish when "The people who sang to their children in Yiddish and worked in Yiddish / and made love in Yiddish are nearly all gone. Phantasmic. Heym."
Welcome to America, the beautiful, the blessed, the blighted and Godforsaken
(Not my usual style, but unexpectedly good.)
Terra Nullius
We had hallelujah billboards. We had industrial rust. He put his finger to my lips and I became the wreckage so we could find our way back. We sat like that a long time.
October 25, 2020
I really enjoyed this book, especially the first section which focuses on the poet's relationships - this section is definitely a 5-star section. The other two sections are good, but didn't pull me in the same way the first section did.
from Niagara: "Love in the violent mist. // In the velvet air. He kisses / the soles of your feet. O girl / in white. Be good and take care. // I haven't fallen like that in a very long time."
from Big Box Encounter: "But how to explain my obsession with destruction? Not self-immolation, / but more of a disintegration, slow, like Alka-Seltzer in water. Like sugar in water. // I dissolve. He writes enthralling."
from Correspondence: "if I mention / Eden, it would be to tell you that there's no such thing. / That you are not the talking snake and I am not // the woman without clothes who offers and offers. / The apple has no knowledge to give us. Our cosmogony / is unclear. This is not a love note, or a prayer, // or a field equation.
from Niagara: "Love in the violent mist. // In the velvet air. He kisses / the soles of your feet. O girl / in white. Be good and take care. // I haven't fallen like that in a very long time."
from Big Box Encounter: "But how to explain my obsession with destruction? Not self-immolation, / but more of a disintegration, slow, like Alka-Seltzer in water. Like sugar in water. // I dissolve. He writes enthralling."
from Correspondence: "if I mention / Eden, it would be to tell you that there's no such thing. / That you are not the talking snake and I am not // the woman without clothes who offers and offers. / The apple has no knowledge to give us. Our cosmogony / is unclear. This is not a love note, or a prayer, // or a field equation.
March 15, 2015
Erika Meitner's latest collection traverses time, places, and forms, with a copious amount of prosody and heart. Although sometimes these poems can list toward the prosey, the book's final sectìon with its Detroit poems are worth it alone.
May 13, 2015
"I have been unoccupied I have been foreclosed I have been vacant for a long time. Everything of any real value has been looted: my pulse, my breath, my hereafter. The most intimate place of all in this city of sadness is the distance between sounds"
December 16, 2014
I loved this collection of Poems. There was so much that was said. It is our lineage as Americans written in free verse.
March 24, 2015
An extremely impressive and endearing collection of poetry.
April 23, 2015
should VQR have asked someone from Detroit to write about Detroit?
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews