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Beschreibung

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.

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.

Über den Autor
Ariel Yelen
Details
Erscheinungsjahr: 2024
Genre: Gattungen & Methoden, Importe
Rubrik: Literaturwissenschaft
Medium: Taschenbuch
Reihe: Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets
Inhalt: Einband - flex.(Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780691264066
ISBN-10: 0691264066
Sprache: Englisch
Einband: Kartoniert / Broschiert
Autor: Yelen, Ariel
Hersteller: Princeton University Press
Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets
Verantwortliche Person für die EU: Libri GmbH, Europaallee 1, D-36244 Bad Hersfeld, gpsr@libri.de
Maße: 233 x 156 x 9 mm
Von/Mit: Ariel Yelen
Erscheinungsdatum: 08.10.2024
Gewicht: 0,15 kg
Artikel-ID: 128871949