Details
-
Title
A Working Girl Can't Win : And Other Poems
-
Author
Garrison, Deborah
-
Binding
Paperback
-
Edition
[ Edition: third
-
Condition
Used - Good
-
Pages
80
-
Volumes
1
-
Language
ENG
-
Publisher
Modern Library, New York
-
Date
2000-02-22
-
Bookseller's Inventory #
A16J-00927
-
ISBN
9780375755408 / 0375755403
-
Weight
0.26 lbs (0.12 kg)
-
Dimensions
8.52 x 5.58 x 0.2 in (21.64 x 14.17 x 0.51 cm)
-
Themes
- Sex & Gender: Feminine
- Topical: Women's Interest
-
Library of Congress subjects
City and town life - New York (State) - New, Young women - New York (State) - New York
-
Library of Congress Catalog Number
99037413
-
Dewey Decimal Code
811.54
About Wonder Book Maryland, United States
Biblio member since 2003
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 4 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
![International League of Antiquarian Booksellers logo](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/images/content_images/ILAB-logo-142x142.svg)
![Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America logo](https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/images/content_images/ABAA-logo-123x153.svg)
With 3 stores less than 1 hour outside the DC/Metropolitan area (1 in Gaithersburg, 1 in Frederick and 1 in Hagerstown, MD), we have the largest selection of books in the tri-state area. Wonder Book and Video has been in business since 1980 and online since 1997. We have over 1 Million books for sale on our website and another 1 Million books for sale in our 3 locations. We have a very active online inventory and as such, we can receive multiple orders for the same item. We fill those orders on a first come first serve basis, but will refund promptly any items that are out of stock. Since 1980 it has always been about the books. ALL kinds of books from 95 cent children\'s paperbacks to five figure rare and collectibles. A merging of the old and new is where we started, and it is where we are today. Our retail stores have always been places where a reader can rush in looking for a title needed for a term paper that is due the next day, or where bibliophiles can get lost \"in the stacks\" for as long as they wish. In 2002 USAToday recognized us as \"1 of 10 Great Old Bookstores\", and we have been featured in numerous other newspaper and TV stories including Washington Post and CSpan.
Terms of Sale:
RETURNS are cheerfully accepted up to 30 days. We ship out within 1-2 business days and U.S. Standard Shipments usually arrive within 6-9 business days, Priority 3-6.
Browse books from Wonder Book
From the publisher
Deborah Garrison was born in Ann Arbor. She was educated at Brown University and New York University. She is now a senior nonfiction editor at The New Yorker, where she has worked since 1986. She and her husband and young daughter live in Montclair, New Jersey.
From the jacket flap
Deborah Garrison, whose work as an editor and writer has enlivened the pages of The New Yorker for more than a decade, evokes the characters and events of her everyday life with intense feeling and, more important, conjures up the universal dilemmas and pleasures of a young woman trying to come to terms with love and work.
Excerpt
The Firemen
God forgive me--
It's the firemen,
leaning in the firehouse garage
with their sleeves rolled up
on the hottest day of the year.
As usual, the darkest one is handsomest.
The oldest is handsomest.
The one with the thin, wiry arms is handsomest.
The young one already going bald is handsomest.
And so on.
Every day I pass them at their station:
the word sexy wouldn't do them justice.
Such idle men are divine--
especially in summer, when my hair
sticks to the back of my neck,
a dirty wind from the subway grate
blows my skirt up, and I feel vulgar,
lifting my hair, gathering it together,
tying it back while they watch
as a kind of relief.
Once, one of them walked beside me
to the corner. Looked into my eyes.
He said, "Will I never see you again?"
Gutsy, I thought.
I'm afraid not, I thought.
What I said was I'm sorry.
But how could he look into my eyes
if I didn't look equally into his?
I'm sorry: as though he'd come close, as though
this really were a near miss.
Please Fire Me
Here comes another alpha male,
and all the other alphas
are snorting and pawing,
kicking up puffs of acrid dust
while the silly little hens
clatter back and forth
on quivering claws and raise
a titter about the fuss.
Here comes another alpha male--
a man's man, a dealmaker,
holds tanks of liquor,
charms them pantsless at lunch:
I've never been sicker.
Do I have to stare into his eyes
and sympathize? If I want my job
I do. Well I think I'm through
with the working world,
through with warming eggs
and being Zenlike in my detachment
from all things Ego.
I'd like to go
somewhere else entirely,
and I don't mean
Europe.
Husband, Not at Home
A soldier, a soldier,
gone to the litigation wars,
or down to Myrtle Beach
to play golf with Dad for the weekend.
Why does the picture of him
tramping the emerald grass in those
silly shoes or flinging his tie over his shoulder
to eat a take-out dinner at his desk--
the carton a squat pagoda in the forest
of legal pads on which he drafts,
in all block caps, every other line,
his motions and replies--fill her
with obscure delight?
Must be the strangeness: his life
strange to her, and hers to him,
as she prowls the apartment with a vacuum
in boxers (his) and bra, or flings
herself across the bed
with three novels to choose from
in the delicious, sports-free
silence. Her dinner a bowl
of cereal, taken cranelike, on one
leg, hip snug to the kitchen
counter. It makes her smile to think
he'd disapprove, to think she likes him
almost best this way: away.
She'll let the cat jump up
to lap the extra milk, and no one's
home to scold her.
Worked Late on a Tuesday Night
Again.
Midtown is blasted out and silent,
drained of the crowd and its doggy day
I trample the scraps of deli lunches
some ate outdoors as they stared dumbly
or hooted at us career girls-the haggard
beauties, the vivid can-dos, open raincoats aflap
in the March wind as we crossed to and fro
in front of the Public Library.
Never thought you'd be one of them,
did you, little lady?
Little Miss Phi Beta Kappa,
with your closetful of pleated
skirts, twenty-nine till death do us
part! Don't you see?
The good schoolgirl turns thirty,
forty, singing the song of time management
all day long, lugging the briefcase
home. So at 10:00 PM
you're standing here
with your hand in the air,
cold but too stubborn to reach
into your pocket for a glove, cursing
the freezing rain as though it were
your difficulty. It's pathetic,
and nobody's fault but
your own. Now
the tears,
down into the collar.
Cabs, cabs, but none for hire.
I haven't had dinner; I'm not half
of what I meant to be.
Among other things, the mother
of three. Too tired, tonight,
to seduce the father.
Media reviews
"An intense, intelligent and wonderfully sly book of poems that should appeal as much to the general reader as to the poetry devotee."
--The New York Times Book Review
"With their short lines, sneaky rhymes, and casual leaps of metaphor, Garrison's poems have a Dickinsonian intensity, and the Amherst
recluse's air of independent-minded, lightly populated singleness. Many a working girl will recognize herself in the poems' running
heroine, and male readers will part with her company reluctantly."--John Updike
"Wry, sexy, appealing -- with a wonderful lyric candor."--Elle
Citations
- New York Times, 03/12/2000, Page 36
About the author
Deborah Garrison was born in Ann Arbor. She was educated at Brown University and New York University. She is now a senior nonfiction editor at The New Yorker, where she has worked since 1986. She and her husband and young daughter live in Montclair, New Jersey.