Works and Days - Bernadette Mayer

Part springtime journal (“why are there thorns?”), "Works and Days" meditates on the first wasps and chipmunks of the season, times’ 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

New Directions, 2016
English
Softcover, 112 pages
154mm x 230mm