As If

by Anna Meister

In a language sensuous, vivid & entirely her own, Meister crafts a loving catalogue of incompleteness. Instead of claiming solid ground, she litters the path with questions. Her couplets see-saw between presence & loss, between as is & as if. "All day I stitch, attempting to keep things / together." Meister's line is a thread, cut suddenly by her teeth, only to begin a thought anew, only to be bit through again. She forgoes seamlessness, binaries of right or wrong, healed or broken. Instead, she prizes intimacy, boldly turning toward us to ask, "Why is this the story / I seem to need to tell?" Each poem startles us, rightly so, out of resolution & into humanness — where we are transparent & grappling & sometimes, even grateful.

— Shira Erlichman, author of Odes to Lithium

Genres: Poetry

24 pages, Chapbook

First published August 15, 2018

Reviews

[Barton Smock · Rating 5 out of 5]

As if thumb wars are underway in some temple where the many seek the blessing of forgetfulness, poet Anna Meister tasks the written word to offer a oneness by which a reader can map the interior of any lateness a person may come to in order to dwell upon things unnamed. With its full-bodied interruptions and without decoration, As If is a restorative condemnation commemorated by the local uplift of its verse. It creates, in form, a ghosted extra and summons answer from the echo of its ask. As these are entries of where that give a future to when, the work itself becomes a telling that grows in the story, that speaks to remain untouched.

[Hannah-Renea Niederberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A while back, on a whim, I saw a tweet promoting Anna Meister’s chapbook, As If from Glass Poetry Press. I ordered a copy and, being in my last term of college, unfortunately, let it collect dust on my shelf for a few months. Fast forward to now when I’ve finally picked it up again and had time to dive in.
Full review at: https://www.hrbumga.com/blog/chapbook...