Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
I Was Working: Poems

I Was Working: Poems

Yelen, Ariel

Hardcover

Series: Princeton Contemporary Poets, Book 181

Fiction AnthologiesGeneral Poetry

ISBN10: 0691264074
ISBN13: 9780691264073
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Oct 8 2024
Pages: 72
Weight: 0.67
Height: 0.31 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

A remarkable book of poems that mixes humor about the absurdities of office life with moments of Zen-like wisdom

Seeking to find a song of the self that can survive or even thrive amid the mundane routines of work, Ariel Yelen's lyrics include wry reflections on the absurdities and abjection of being a poet who is also an office worker and commuter in New York. In the poems' dialogues between labor and autonomy, the beeping of a microwave in the staff lounge becomes an opportunity for song, the poet writes from a cubicle as it is being sawed in half, and the speaker of the title poem decides to quit everything except work, sacrificing her life and loved ones to bury herself in her four jobs, striving at any cost to find relief from the attempt to both have a life and be a good worker--No one was happy to see me, and so / at last I could work. No one said it's okay. It wasn't / okay, thus my work flourished. Despite such discontents, I Was Working finds humor, play, and even joy in its original and compelling search for the possibility of self-liberation.

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