I Was Working: Poems

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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 Yelens lyrics include wry reflections on the absurdities and abjection of being a poet who is also an office worker and commuter in New York City. 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 workerNo one was happy to see me, and so / at last I could work. No one said its okay. It wasnt / okay, thus my work flourished. Despite all such discontents, I Was Working finds humor, play, and even joy in its original and compelling search for the possibility of self-liberation.

Author Bio

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