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p_tremuloides 's review for:

Ideal Cities by Erika Meitner
5.0

Loved the first section of this book of poetry, "Rental Towns," in part because the poems flowed like Matthew Dickman's--taking these very real moments and turning them into captured moments full of poeticism, full of the beauty of the fleeting.

The second section took a more religious view and the poems seemed, to me, more forced, less grounded (overall) in the real. That being said, I only skipped one poem in this entire book and that poem was in the second section where I just couldn't root myself in the poem or the form and certainly not for 3-4 pages.

Meitner reminds us that some stories are not ours to tell and in so many of these poems promotes gentleness without being "wooey"

From the title poem:

...In the ideal city
my neighbor is a taxi driver.

My neighbor is at sea.
My neighbor thinks

his house is haunted
while his wife's away

on business. My neighbor
gives a robber a glass

of Chateau Malescot St-Exupery
and a hug. In the ideal city my neighbors

are a multi-generational
family & one guy

who puts chairs
in the street

to save a spot
for our moving truck.