Works and Days - Bernadette Mayer (New Directions)

A brand-new collection, Works and Days is classic Bernadette Mayer: fresh, learned, exciting, and endlessly surprising. Part springtime journal (“why are there thorns?“), Works and Days meditates on the first wasps and chipmunks of the season, time’s passage, grackle hearts, and dandelions, while also collecting dozens of poems considering the Catholic Church, Sir Thomas Browne, “Go Away“ welcome mats, books, floods (“never of dollar money“), the invention of words, local politics, friendships, property development, dogs, and Hesiod. Every page delights. As the poet herself notes: “My name is Bernadette Mayer, sometimes / I am at the head of my class.“

I don't mean to get all
Parallel universey on you
But I am at once the spider
The spider web, and
Me observing them

Published by New Directions, 2016
Paperbook, 112 pages
ISBN: 9780811225175
15 × 23 cm