hrbumga's review
4.0
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/chapbooks-as-if
Full review at: https://www.hrbumga.com/blog/chapbooks-as-if
aicher's review
4.0
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/chapbooks-as-if
Full review at: https://www.hrbumga.com/blog/chapbooks-as-if
courtneyfalling's review
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
I feel like this would be a good chapbook for someone used to poetry on social media but looking to expand their range and reading of contemporary poetry overall. It has a gentle quality, like coming out of a dissociative episode to a familiar, very sad ache, but being almost grateful that you can feel that ache again. The imagery is carefully unsteady, very interior, and hits right at the part of my brain that also is trying to think of every day as World Suicide Prevention Day (22).
Each page begins with an asterisk only, so I'm alternating between thinking of each page as a discrete poem and thinking about the whole chapbook as one slippery poem with sections. Because of that, I'm going to list some favorite lines and moments (instead of favorite poems).
Each page begins with an asterisk only, so I'm alternating between thinking of each page as a discrete poem and thinking about the whole chapbook as one slippery poem with sections. Because of that, I'm going to list some favorite lines and moments (instead of favorite poems).
- "It's enough to say the tulips / turned like an ankle" (2)
- "I once could catalogue all of it, now it turns / I'm a sieve" (4)
- "I ask to be good but don't / know the taste" (3) and "As if time can have // a taste" (9)
- "This reminds me of a roadside motel, a trip via small highways, / reminds me of a wooden bench and a dick in my mouth, a pop // can for smoking... Will I still matter once I do not matter // to you?" (13)
- "I wake feeling I am no good but / for my gentleness, my tendency to lie right down // where I am and make a home of it" (17)
- "I've never imagined life / as a bunch of plants it's not my job to water" (18)
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness
Minor: Sexual assault and Suicidal thoughts
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