Updated review 9/22/2023
I found out about R. Meisel's apparent disappearance from the internet this year (although apparently it's old news) and was distraught. I loved her poems! I wanted to get the rest of her books! I finally had disposable income and my adhd was letting me read again! The time had come!
Naturally, I took to the web and started sleuthing. And found out that she had pulled "her" work from the internet... *drumroll please* due to plagiarism accusations. Pretty substantiated ones.
There isn't a lot of information to cross reference since her blogs, payhip store, amazon page, and everything else have been deleted, but I don't feel confident in these published collections of hers being... ethically sourced, if you will. I'm glad I only downloaded her free books and was too broke to give her any money for them, but I also don't want any positive reviews i wrote initially out there currying favor with whoever sees them on her behalf.
I would love to find the actual authors and support their work instead! If you know of any, please reach out, here or elsewhere, and point me in their direction. I've tried searching a few lines from the poems in the collections that I have access to, but haven't come up with a lot.
That's all. I'll be copy and pasting this review into the text of all the reviews/ratings I've left on goodreads.
If you were an author whose work was stolen, I'm deeply sorry. That shit's fucked, and your vulnerability and the stories you were trying to tell deserved better.
11/15/2021: read & gave 5 stars