Linda Smukler

My favorite part of this collection was actually the introduction. It's how I first came to learn of Samuel Ace—he read excerpts from some of these letters at a publishing conference I attended a few years ago, and I was so struck by their beauty and introspection. I loved the concept of writing to a past self and that past self responding back; it was part seance, part love story, part eulogy, and has stuck in my mind since.

The poems in this book are not nearly as tender as the Linda/Sam show more letters that precede them. Or rather, their tenderness is buried under ferocity. If I had to sum up Meet Me There in one phrase, it would be: "the brutality of desire." The running theme seems to be the lengths we go to feel more alive, more connected, and the ways that is thwarted. I really enjoyed how Smukler/Ace writes about sexual dominance and the way gender dynamics play into fantasies about power exchange—it felt visceral, and authentic in how desire becomes tangled up with upbringing and relationships. But I was left bored by the repetition of the other poems about sex: lots of cheating, lots of sensory details about strapons and anal sex, lots of forceful yearning, after a while it felt like I was reading the same poem over and over again.

More than anything, I'm intrigued by this as a deliberate resurrection on Ace's part. And so I'm curious to read his more recent work! show less