Customer Reviews

A Working Girl Can't Win : And Other Poems

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Great idea for a collection--poems from the point of view of a female office worker. But there's not much empathy, not much risk, not much music, not much wit, not much anything here. These are above all intellectually and linguistically lazy poems which aim for irony but seldom get beyond archness. No perceptions you couldn't find in the pages of a woman's magazine or on a TV-show about working women--and not even as entertaining as any number of chick lit novels.

This is very good poetry: insightful, articulate, and very witty. Garrison is quite deft with the English language and doesn't litter her writing with clever, irrelevant tricks. She keeps her work focused and to the point. She has the snap and sting of Michael Benedikt.

Read a review in Newsweek and immediately bought my copy. Rings very true to the things that I am feeling about my own life, career, and friends. I hope she publishes more of her poetry. This has also reawakened my interest in poetry, which I forgot about since the 8th grade!

If Deborah Garrison is the one to liberate poetry from the ivory tower, as some readers suggest, then poetry's doomed. The true liberators far surpass her in wit, grace, and intellect: Dove, Walcott, Bei Dao to name a few--& you don't need to be an academic to notice this.

mediocre song lyrics without the songs. how did this get the kind of praise it has??? unsophisticated, self-absorbed, and unwriterly. ugh.

I read almost this entire book this am on the train while on my way to work. I am so thrilled to see the work of a generation x-er (perhaps on the baby boomer cusp) like myself who is so full spectrum- honest, humorous, contemplative, strong, vulnerable, contradictory and therefore, human.

I absolutely loved it. Not so much "Plath" like, but maybe more "Sharon Olds" without all the dick.

This is a somewhat short collection, 59 pages of actual poems with a lot of white space. The main emphasis is on working women, but many of the poems are about relationships. There is a range in style, length, and subject matter. The style ranges from the crude "Fight Song" to some of a more sentimental nature. Their length varies from one to three pages in an easy to read typeface (Palatino).

Overall, it is a collection of 28 poems previously published in "The New Yorker" (where the author is an editor), "Elle," "The New York Times," "Open City," and "Slate." Like other collections, most readers will find some poems they like more than others. It is fun poetry for the masses. It is not for the psuedo-intellectuals who are wrapped up in great authors. A few of the poems remind me of the style/subject matter of Robert Service who wrote poems about everything from dieting to taxes...

the powers that be in the poetry community should be ashamed of themselves. why in the world hasn't any poet publicly criticized these poems? perhaps the art of criticism is truly dead...or perhaps it has something to do with garrison's position at the new yorker?

One cannot help but wonder, if Deborah Garrison were not senior editor at The New Yorker would her jejune attempts at poetry ever have been noticed, much less published? Uggh. What a bunch of superficial, rhyme-y dime-y fluff. Good poetry marinates in one's marrow. Garrison's stuff (I won't dignify it with the name "poetry")floats like dust on a dingy supermarket tabloid rack. If she wants to vent her spleen in the wee hours, fine, but she should keep it to herself and not use her position to force it on others. Someone needs to say it, so I will, this emperor(ess) hath no clothes!

Deborah Garrison is a new name to me and a fresh pinch about the poetry nerve. After you read a few dozen books of poetry, technique gives way to meaning and original ideas flatten the importance of style. This is what Deborah has done... tossed style aside for the sake of meaning and smacked the reader with a cool splash of it. Write another, please!