Copia (8 page)

N
OTES

The title
Copia
was taken from photographer Brian Ulrich's photography project of the same name (
notifbutwhen.com
).

“Retail Space Available” and “Ghostbox” were based on interviews with photographer Brian Ulrich, about his experiences photographing sites for his project
Dark Stores, Ghost Boxes, and Dead Malls
.

“with/out” is after Janice N. Harrington's poem “Heat,” from her book
Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone
(BOA Editions, 2007).

Both “Niagara” poems are based on images from the photo series of the same name, by Alec Soth (
alecsoth.com/photography/projects/niagra/
), as well as interviews with the photographer about his experiences on the project.

Some of the phrases in “Let the future begin this way:” were taken from photographer Danny Lyon's book
Pictures from the New World
(Aperture, 1988) and
The New American Ghetto
by photographer Camilo José Vergara (Rutgers University Press, 1997). The last four lines are from Romans 10:15.

The Yiddish lines in “Yiddishland” come from
Di folks-shprakh
, by Y. Klepfish (Warsaw: Farlag “Progress,” 1909–1910) as cited in
Adventures in Yiddishland
by Jeffrey Shandler (University of California Press, 2006).

“To Whom It May Concern:” contains language from an NPR story by Daniel Zwerdling, called “A Bright Spot of Life on the Icy Continent” (March 15, 2008).

“The Book of Dissolution” was inspired by James Griffioen's photographs and account of his explorations of the former Detroit Public Schools Book Depository/Roosevelt Warehouse, as recounted on his blog (
www.sweet-juniper.com
).

“Post-Industrialization,” “All That Blue Fire,” “Outside the Abandoned Packard Plant,” “And After the Ark,” “Inside the Frame,” “Outside the Frame,” and “Borderama” were commissioned by
Virginia Quarterly Review
for the Spring 2011 issue, entitled
Ruin & Rebirth
. These documentary poems resulted from a reporting trip to Detroit with Jesse
Dukes and Kate Ringo in August 2010, and would not exist had it not been for their hard work on the project, and the support of Ted Genoways. There are many other Detroit residents who gave us their time, stories, and expertise, for which I'm grateful: Dan Austin, Terry Blackhawk, Alvin Brewer, Delores Casey, Arnold Collens, Sean Doerr, Wendy Ford, Oren Goldenberg, Vicki Hooks Green, Lolita Hernandez, Jerry Herron, Greg Lenhoff, Andy Linn, Emily Linn, Peter Markus, Joan Nash, Suzanne Scarfone, Nick Tobier, Stuart Trager, and Shar Willis.

“Porto, Portare, Portavi, Portatus” contains lines from John 16:12, Acts 7:43, 1 Timothy 6:7, Genesis 18:12, and Luke 7:14.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to all the editors of the following journals and anthologies where these poems, sometimes in different form, first appeared:

AGNI
: “The Book of Dissolution,” “Niagara”;

Anti-
: “with/out”;

Cave Wall
: “Ars Poetica with Radio Apparatus, Toddler, & Ducks”;

Cellpoems
: “And the moon”;

Crab Orchard Review
: “Maple Ridge”;

Gulf Coast
: “Staking a Claim”;

Handsome
: “Interrobang,” “Retail Space Available”;

The Ilanot Review
: “You return the Torah to the ark,” “By Other Means”;

Indiana Review
: “Niagara,” “Yiddishland”;

jubilat
: “Let the future begin this way:”;

Ninth Letter
: “Terra Nullius”;

Painted Bride Quarterly
: “Inconsequential Alchemy”;

Ploughshares
: “Porto, Portare, Portavi, Portatus”;

Plume
: “And After the Ark,” “Apologetics”;

River Styx
: “Snowpocalypse”;

The Rumpus
: “Walmart Supercenter”;

Salt Hill
: “Ghostbox”;

Slate.com
: “Big Box Encounter”;

The Southern Review
: “The Language of Happiness,” “Correspondence,” “In/exhaustible”;

Sou'wester
: “Maple Ridge”;

Subtropics
: “To Whom It May Concern”;

Tin House
: “Terra Nullius”;

Virginia Quarterly Review
: “Post-Industrialization,” “All That Blue Fire,” “Borderama,” “Outside the Abandoned Packard Plant,” “Inside the Frame,” “Outside the Frame”;

Waccamaw
: “The Architecture of Memory”;

Whiskey Island
: “One Version of December.”

“Litany of our Radical Engagement with the Material World” was first published in
Alhambra Poetry Calendar 2011
.

“Untitled [and the moon]” was first published on the Academy of American Poets website.

“Yizker Bukh” was first published on
The Chronicle of Higher Education
“Arts & Academe” blog, and reprinted in
The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry
, Ed. Lisa Russ Spaar (Drunken Boat Media, 2013).

“Yiddishland” was reprinted in
The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry
, Eds. Matthew Silverman and Deborah Ager (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).

Many thanks to Virginia Tech (in particular, the Department of English, and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, for time and space and support. I'm grateful to the Child Development Center for Learning and Research (CDCLR) at Virginia Tech, and Rainbow Riders Childcare Center, for joyfully teaching and tending to my children, which allowed me to write this book. I am also indebted to agent extraordinaire Nat Jacks at Inkwell Management, and the poets who helped me with this manuscript in its various stages: Sandra Beasley, Mary Biddinger, Jehanne Dubrow, Tom Gardner, Joy Katz, David Stack, Susan Somers-Willett, and Rachel Zucker—their big hearts and eagle eyes. Peter Conners and the fine folks at BOA Editions, Ltd. are the tops.

And always, Steve Trost—love, lynchpin, lyre, lookout.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Erika Meitner's first collection of poems,
Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore
, won the 2002 Anhinga-Robert Dana Prize for Poetry from Anhinga Press. Her second collection,
Ideal Cities
, was a winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series Award and was published by HarperCollins in 2010. Her next book,
Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls
, was published by Anhinga Press in 2011. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the MFA program at the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow, and also earned an M.A. in Religion as a Morgenstern Fellow in Jewish Studies. Her work has appeared in
American Poetry Review
,
The Best American Poetry 2011
,
Gulf Coast
,
Ploughshares
,
Best African American Essays 2010
,
Tin House
, and
Prairie Schooner
, among other journals and anthologies. She is currently an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches in the MFA program.

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