Erika Meitner is the author of five previous books of poems, including Holy Moly Carry Me, which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Copia; and Ideal Cities, a 2009 National Poetry series winner. Her poems have appeared in publications including Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry, and The Believer. In her newest collection, Useful Junk (BOA Editions), Meitner takes up the question of desire and intimacy. Boldly affirming that pleasure is a vital form of knowledge, these poems render our changing bodies real and alive. Our selves are made real and beautiful by our embodied experiences, and our desire is what keeps us alive. Memories of long-lost lovers, the still thrilling touch of a spouse, and every intimate moment we have ever had, shape us. Letter poems to a younger poet interspersed throughout the collection question desire and how new technologies are reframing self-image and changing the balance of risk and reward in erotic encounters. With dauntless vulnerability, Meitner travels open to the world, always returning to the intimacies deep within the self.