In Archivist Scissors, the living matriarch of poetry Anne Waldman revisits memories and retrospectives of her peers, eulogizing the lives and work of her collaborators and the friends alongside whom she came into her artistic development, extending the torch to the next generation… Waldman’s stylistic portrayal of memory is written in pangs of red, resonant and primal, as she seeks the ancient, fundamental, and ecstatic in the lives of the artists she has borne witness to in her lifetime. Waldman is a fiery woman of conviction (an Aries stellium), but I feel she is at her strongest when she is reverently personal. Her signature deviations from grammar conventions (e.g. “Until music shifts purposeful your hearts”) makes the poem feel as if it is being impulsively delivered in the process of being brought to cognition, assembled from fragments of a pre-lingual dream. As she mourns her friends, she mourns too the planet which humanity is carelessly letting slip through our fingers, watching this planet go up and flames and wash away.
—Kat Beaman, Commonplace Review

Archivist Scissors pushes archive beyond its stasis by embodying memory’s form. It is a collage-like assemblage, jump-cutting between memories and the context of their retrieval (bereavement, political upheaval, global disaster, art-making, art-receiving). Structurally, syntactically, the collection embodies the spontaneity, jumpiness, and inquisitiveness of experiential thought and memory.… The poems are alive—kinetic, as any poem by Waldman must be—with Waldman’s mind in action.
—Kate Millar, LA Review of Books

Anne Waldman has been a force for the good all her poetry life. This collection is such a lyrically beautiful and meaningful demonstration of her unwavering commitment to both acknowledging and being a part of an inspired community. These poems are powered by love and a belief system alive with friendship and true reciprocity. As in all her work, the address in Archivist Scissors is both deeply public and outwardly personal. Her vital work has been a touchstone for so many all these years. I love this book.
—Peter Gizzi

I love these fragments and memories, the poet collecting shards of story, life, close to her. This is Waldman in a tone we don’t frequently hear her in, but one all hers. Here she is, the seer gathering all the threads of news in her hands — what weaving to make of these explosive tidbits? What if all the fuses were snipped with her archivist scissors, so the news is not of destruction but of bombs that never go off? Of a community of poets, artists, and other beloveds? Here the poet sings “the sutra of … our human solidarity.”
—Eleni Sikelianos