Works & Days by Bernadette Mayer

Works & Days by Bernadette Mayer is a collection of poems that is in part a journal or day book of springtime, with poems whose titles are simply the date (presumably that they were written) which appear chronologically throughout the book. Some of these entries read more like diary entries, cataloguing the events of the day—some of them incredibly, seemingly mundane, such as this moment from “April 21”: “Today last year Max drove a small U-Haul full of Rosemary’s work up here. It said Mom’s Attic which is where it was going.” Between these “diary” poems are free verse poems, many of them built from the “diary” entries. The poems cover a wide range of subjects including poetry, religion, relationships, and politics. This could be described as a document of one woman’s life and work from April 15 to June 21. It’s a document of the making of poetry.

A review: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/books/review/bernadette-mayer-works-and-days.html

Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0811225178