Inventory at the All-night Drugstore [Paperback]

Erika Meitner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2003

Winner of the 2002 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, selected by Stephen Corey, editor of The Georgia Review.

Editorial Reviews

Review

These are poems like the tattoos she hymns and ponders--they mark our being with their delicate, indelible patterns --Greg Orr

The reader takes an unpredictable, exhilarating trip with the subject matter of Erika Meitner's poems--from memories of a hormone-charged adolescence in the big city, to adult affairs of love and lust and loss; from learning to teach in a classroom filled with pubescent fireplug mirrors of oneself, to confronting one's Jewish history at the hands of an equally fiery grandmother. But riding herd on all this range is Meitner's distinctly snappy voice, a blend of assertiveness and vulnerability. --Stephen Corey

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Meitner casts a wry, empathic eye on the sanctities and subterfuges that keep us human. --Ron Wallace

About the Author

Erika Meitner was born in New York in 1975. She attended Dartmouth College, Hebrew University, and the University of Virginia, where she received her M.F.A. as a Henry Hoyns Fellow. Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Poet Lore, Mid-American Review, The Cream City Review, and The Southeast Review. In 2001, she was the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She has worked as a dating columnist, a Hebrew school instructor, a computer consultant, a lifeguard, a documentary film production assistant, and a middle school teacher in the New York City public school system. At publication time, she was taking a hiatus from pursuing a Ph.D. in Religion at the University of Virginia as the Morganstern Fellow in Judaic Studies to be a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Product Details

• Paperback: 110 pages
• Publisher: Anhinga Press (September 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0938078747
• ISBN-13: 978-0938078746
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,029,298 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Erika Meitner's first book, Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore, won the 2002 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and was published by Anhinga Press in 2003. Her second book, Ideal Cities, was selected as a winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series, and was published by Harper Perennial in August 2010. Her third collection of poems, Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls, was published in February 2011 by Anhinga Press. Her poems have appeared recently in Tin House, The Southern Review, Indiana Review, APR, Slate, VQR, and The New Republic. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches in the MFA program. For poems and additional information, please visit www.erikameitner.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Praise!, January 24, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Inventory at the All-night Drugstore (Paperback)

Erika Meitner's poems are (I'll use the words from a poem of hers) "glamorously helpless". The glamour of love is seen at its best when we end up on our knees, almost destroyed, but left in that beautiful oblivion that the truly passionate know. Her love poems are not only erotic poems written for the beloved, but love poems for her students, love poems for her family, and love poems written to an invisible God who is clearly a God of words. These poems, visceral, inked with the precision of a needle, leave their mark, their tattoo, on the reader and on contemporary poetry.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best new voices in poetry today., March 6, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Inventory at the All-night Drugstore (Paperback)

Erika Meitner is simply a fantastic poet. Her work is real, sincere, beautiful and original. It deserves every single bit of praise it gets--she's an enormous star with so much wit and talent, she truly blows all those obtuse, frighteningly self-referential young turks right out of the water. Hers is a voice worth listening to: how can one woman have all the answers, and in one slim tome? Look no further. It's all in the drugstore, and it's open all night.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars wow!, November 5, 2003

By 

"lucywinnie" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inventory at the All-night Drugstore (Paperback)

I usually find contemporary poetry esoteric. But this fantastic collection speaks of real experiences and feelings, in a voice tuned to the meter of modern life. Ms. Meitner has really touched me with her personal insights on moments that affect us all.