In a fascinating Q&A with Please Excuse This Poem, BOA poet Erika Meitner discusses her "favorites," including the first and favorite books she's ever read. Included among the first poems she has ever read and loved are Lucille Clifton's “Admonitions” and “Roots," both from a copy of Contemporary American Poetry, edited by the late BOA founder A. Poulin, Jr., which she bought  at a library sale when she was 15 years old. Erika Meitner is most recently the author of Copia. This fourth book by Meitner grapples with the widespread implications of commercialism and over-consumption, particularly in exurban America. Documentary poems originally commissioned by Virginia Quarterly Review examine the now-bankrupt city of Detroit, once the thriving heart of the American Dream. Meitner probes the hulking ruins of office buildings, tract housing, superstores, construction sites, and freeways--exposing a vacuous world of decay and abandonment--while holding out hope for re-birth from ashes. Click here for the full Q&A with Erika Meitner. Copia is available now at the BOA Bookstore.