I Was Working
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I Was Working: Poems(Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets)

I Was Working: Poems(Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets)


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About the Book

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.

About the Author :
Ariel Yelen is a poet whose work has been published in Poetry, BOMB, the American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, and other magazines.

Review :
"In her debut poetry collection, I Was Working, Ariel Yelen composes with the strangled chords of the contemporary workplace a fresh kind of music. . . . Yelen’s poems convincingly render the drone, distraction, and seething frustration of that chthonic bargain the modern creative has to make: holding a day job."---Austin Adams, Rain Taxi Review of Books "A pleasing first collection. . . . all the poems here offer thoughtful observation and serious consideration. . . . [I Was Working is] both highly original and shamelessly entertaining. There’s an informed maturity here, combined with a little playfulness and a good ear, which makes for a quite remarkable debut. "---Robert Dunsdon, Colorado Review


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Product Details
  • ISBN-13: 9780691264073
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • Publisher Imprint: Princeton University Press
  • Height: 235 mm
  • No of Pages: 72
  • Sub Title: Poems
  • ISBN-10: 0691264074
  • Publisher Date: 08 Oct 2024
  • Binding: Hardback
  • Language: English
  • Series Title: Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets
  • Width: 156 mm


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