I Was Working

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.

“Ariel Yelen’s poetry is exquisitely witty and charming. These poems are intimate etchings of a poet’s daily life under late capitalism. Astutely observed, pleasurable to read, and heartbreakingly relatable, I Was Working is a collection you’ll read and reread.”—Cathy Park Hong, author of Engine Empire and Minor Feelings

“I love poems that impart how poets get by, meaning, what we do for a living. I also love poems that take risks that can only come from lived experiences of risk. In I Was Working, Ariel Yelen lays bare the sly vagaries of late capitalism (would you rather be ‘love-low’ or ‘money-low’?) and offers a way to reinvent our relationships outside the logic of exploitation through authentically living with others. Yelen uses the tension of writing poetry when she has no time to write to create some of the most beautiful ‘work poems’ I have ever read. Her book is no small miracle—it’s so good.”—Stacy Szymaszek, author of Famous Hermits and The Pasolini Book