Poetry Shopping Holiday Guide - Erika Meitner

Erika Meitner's suggestions:

For the mother with a Robert Redford crush, or avid People Magazine reader in your family--Kiki Petrosino spends the first half of Fort Red Border detailing her imaginary affair with the aforementioned celebrity:
Fort Red Border by Kiki Petrosino (Sarabande Books)

For the film buff (or catatonic) on your list--Jesse Lee Kercheval's gorgeous ode to silent film:
Cinema Muto by Jesse Lee Kercheval (Southern Illinois University Press)

For fans of Rachel Whiteread sculpture, disintegrating industrial spaces, motels, pawnshops, and empty parking lots--as perfect for your wayward brother who lives in Buffalo and hangs out in front of the 7-11 as it is for your soulful sister-in-law the landscape architect:
Sum of Every Lost Ship by Allison Titus (Cleveland State University Press)

For the vintage aficionados, visual artists, and people you know who like their text arty (think Jenny Holzer meets flea market explosion)--stunning, quirky, super-fun to look at and read:
Lake Antiquity by Brandon Downings (Fence Books)

For the marrieds or breeders in your life--a deadly honest look at the domestic sphere that's so compelling I read the entire thing while sitting in my car in the library parking lot:
Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker (Wave Books)

Impress your Jewish friends for Hanukkah by gifting them with Jehanne Dubrow's poems, composed in the voice of Ida, an imaginary Jewish poet living in Always Winter, Poland before World War II:
From the Fever World by Jehanne Dubrow (Washington Writers' Publishing House)

For a Hanukkah gift-pack (there are 8 nights, people), you might buy a nice notebook and some great pens, along with six Jewishly-authored books of poems: Zucker and Dubrow's mentioned above, along with:
Tsim Tsum by Sabrina Orah Mark (Saturnalia Books)

Lost Alphabet by Lisa Olsteins (Copper Canyon Press)

The Book of Seventy by Alicia Ostriker (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Awayward by Jennifer Kronovet (BOA Editions)

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Erika Meitner is the author of Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore (Anhinga Press, 2003), and the forthcoming collections Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls (Anhinga Press, 2011), and Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner. She teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Tech. You can read more about her here.