Works & Days

by 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.”

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2016

About the author

Bernadette Mayer (born May 12, 1945) is an American poet, writer, and visual artist associated with both the Language poets and the New York School. Mayer's record-keeping and use of stream-of-consciousness narrative are two trademarks of her writing, though she is also known for her work with form and mythology. In addition to the influence of her textual-visual art and journal-keeping, Mayer's poetry is widely acknowledged as some of the first to speak accurately and honestly about the experience of motherhood. Mayer edited the journal 0 TO 9 with Vito Acconci, and, until 1983, United Artists books and magazines with Lewis Warsh. Mayer taught at the New School for Social Research, where she earned her degree in 1967, and, during the 1970s, she led a number of workshops at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York. From 1980 to 1984, Mayer served as director of the Poetry Project, and her influence in the contemporary avant-garde is felt widely, with writers like Kathy Acker, Charles Bernstein, John Giorno, and Anne Waldman having sat in on her workshops.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Works & Days has been a gradual burn for me. I remember thumbing through it when it was first released and wasn't thrilled. Once you get past the first 15 pages, the poems expand infinitely. I was transported back to a small reading at Columbia College Chicago where I met Bernadette in 2011 and started remembering her laughter. Her humor. I remember having to go back into that little room and pick up my Romantic Poetry textbook after forgetting it-- and her cackles re: the size of it and making us carry them around. These traits carry beyond her poetry. I can't stop thinking about these poems. They are hilarious and gritty and mundane and boring and captivating all at the same time. I can't wait to keep reading. This is one of those books for sure, that has inspired me to start writing again.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

poems that are lively and bright and weird, which is what art should do to me, make me remember to be alive. bernadette mayer is saying "property is robbery" over and over again. she's a genius.

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry is all about the writer’s special relationship to language. Mayer has a wonderful rapport with words, and an even more profound appreciation of letters. Reminded me a bit of Sylvia Legris, which I think would be a welcome comparison

[great hit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me smile for the first time this year

[Guttersnipe Das · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bernadette Mayer is famous for her innovative lists of writing exercises. (Google them -- you might change the way you write, or even live.) Many of this poems in the book seem to follow directions that only Bernadette Mayer could ever fulfill.

Directions that might read something like : Write a poem that is also a diary entry about the weather and ordinary stuff that happened during the day. Make it ordinary, also fearless, unpredictable, also boundless. Most importantly, the poem should be fun to be read and make the reader feel like they have at least one true friend in the world.

Poems can feel like perfections, works of art flawlessly cut and polished. Whereas Mayer’s poems feel like there was a stream of poetry running past her house.

I’m sure the truth is more complicated, but it feels like New Directions wanted a book so Mayer went through the notebook nearest her hand. A thin slice of a wide poetic life. This offhandedness feels generous -- like poetry is something that can happen to us too, and not just to the rarefied, erudite and qualified. (Also, I no longer feel ashamed for shopping so often at Family Dollar! Bernadette Mayer shopped there too.)

If you haven’t read ‘A Bernadette Mayer Reader’, start with that one. If you have, then this book is another opportunity for pleasure and tender company.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read about this author in the New York Review of Books and was intrigued.
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Works & Days is subtitled “spring journal” and crisscrosses between the philosophic and the mundane. Actual journal entries interspersed with more polished poems, with lists of made up words. There are all the little daily moments that make up life: the weather, one’s meals, the annoying neighbor (“gubof“ = guy who bought the field), the daily losses and frustrations. There’s also weighty far reaching ideas about capitalism, loss, sex, community. There’s language play for the sake of play, poems for friends, poems for strangers, poems to remember the day to day.
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“Making syntax not sense, the illusion of sense.” The poet and the person merge to become a poet-person whose poetry explains the person who is present in the poems.

I’ll be reading more Mayer for sure!

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting combination of journaling and poetry, and a very pleasant way to start the day. Read them a page or two each morning. And you gotta love a poet who writes in her introduction (to a previous collection titled "Sonnets"), "capitalism is the culprit, never doubt it."

[Joel Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being cheated?

[ines · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Original!

[Max-Philipp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Bernadetter Mayer's work and this was the first thing I had read of hers. Mayer is excellent and I can't wait to read more of her poetry.

[Aili]

Infinity like a lily pad like a defrocked priest

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Isn't every day weird?"

(pg 96)

[Dearwassily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess poetry no longer tries to be beautiful or captivating?

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. Her writing is clever, fun, elegant in simplicity, appreciative, nonchalant, casual, bold, honest, environmental, socialist, and thought-provoking. Her writing gives me a sense of pleasure and ease and of not being alone in thinking -- what-the-fuck people!? To me, her work repeats that everything is so simple and we've made it so complicated.

[Sarah Koppelkam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bernadette loves words and I love Bernadette

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

"give everybody/ everything" (6)

“I guess I’m falling apart, I’ll just / sew myself back together but will it last?” (6)

"After moving here, I wrote this poem. Everybody said it didn't/ say the right things and I sent it to the wrong person" (14)

"In the woods, I can build things/ Without anybody seeing me. I can make piles/ Of autumn leaves, wood, yarn, snow/ And cover them with a tarp" (15)

[Pata Tús · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uy, pensé que me encantaría y sin embargo me ha desconcertado bastante. No he terminado de encontrarle el punto, todo el tiempo tenía la sensación incómoda de estar en una casa en la que hay muchísimos trastos en medio. Vaya reseña, pero cuento lo que hay.

[Amy Bernhard · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Some I loved, some I didn't.

[cori · Rating 5 out of 5]

reread ⥀