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What We Are Reading Today: ‘I Was Working: Poems’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘I Was Working: Poems’
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Updated 12 October 2024

What We Are Reading Today: ‘I Was Working: Poems’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘I Was Working: Poems’

Author: Ariel Yelen

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.