{"product_id":"a-working-girl-cant-win-isbn-9780375755408","title":"A Working Girl Can't Win","description":"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.\"An intense, intelligent and wonderfully sly book of poems that should appeal as much to the general reader as to the poetry devotee.\" \u003cbr\u003e--The New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With their short lines, sneaky rhymes, and casual leaps of metaphor, Garrison's poems have a Dickinsonian intensity, and the Amherst\u003cbr\u003erecluse's air of independent-minded, lightly populated singleness. Many a working girl will recognize herself in the poems' running\u003cbr\u003eheroine, and male readers will part with her company reluctantly.\"--John Updike\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Wry, sexy, appealing -- with a wonderful lyric candor.\"--ElleDeborah 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.\u003cb\u003eThe Firemen\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGod forgive me--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt's the firemen, \u003cbr\u003eleaning in the firehouse garage\u003cbr\u003ewith their sleeves rolled up \u003cbr\u003eon the hottest day of the year. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs usual, the darkest one is handsomest. \u003cbr\u003eThe oldest is handsomest. \u003cbr\u003eThe one with the thin, wiry arms is handsomest. \u003cbr\u003eThe young one already going bald is handsomest. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd so on. \u003cbr\u003eEvery day I pass them at their station: \u003cbr\u003ethe word sexy wouldn't do them justice. \u003cbr\u003eSuch idle men are divine--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eespecially in summer, when my hair \u003cbr\u003esticks to the back of my neck, \u003cbr\u003ea dirty wind from the subway grate \u003cbr\u003eblows my skirt up, and I feel vulgar, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elifting my hair, gathering it together, \u003cbr\u003etying it back while they watch \u003cbr\u003eas a kind of relief. \u003cbr\u003eOnce, one of them walked beside me \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto the corner. Looked into my eyes. \u003cbr\u003eHe said, \"Will I never see you again?\" \u003cbr\u003eGutsy, I thought. \u003cbr\u003eI'm afraid not, I thought. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat I said was \u003ci\u003eI'm sorry\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003eBut how could he look into my eyes \u003cbr\u003eif I didn't look equally into his? \u003cbr\u003eI'm sorry: as though he'd come close, as though \u003cbr\u003ethis really were a near miss. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePlease Fire Me\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere comes another alpha male, \u003cbr\u003eand all the other alphas \u003cbr\u003eare snorting and pawing, \u003cbr\u003ekicking up puffs of acrid dust \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhile the silly little hens \u003cbr\u003eclatter back and forth \u003cbr\u003eon quivering claws and raise \u003cbr\u003ea titter about the fuss. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere comes another alpha male--\u003cbr\u003ea man's man, a dealmaker, \u003cbr\u003eholds tanks of liquor, \u003cbr\u003echarms them pantsless at lunch: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI've never been sicker. \u003cbr\u003eDo I have to stare into his eyes \u003cbr\u003eand sympathize? If I want my job \u003cbr\u003eI do. Well I think I'm through \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith the working world, \u003cbr\u003ethrough with warming eggs \u003cbr\u003eand being Zenlike in my detachment \u003cbr\u003efrom all things Ego. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'd like to go \u003cbr\u003esomewhere else entirely, \u003cbr\u003eand I don't mean \u003cbr\u003eEurope. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHusband, Not at Home\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA soldier, a soldier, \u003cbr\u003egone to the litigation wars, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eor down to Myrtle Beach \u003cbr\u003eto play golf with Dad for the weekend. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhy does the picture of him \u003cbr\u003etramping the emerald grass in those \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esilly shoes or flinging his tie over his shoulder \u003cbr\u003eto eat a take-out dinner at his desk--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe carton a squat pagoda in the forest \u003cbr\u003eof legal pads on which he drafts, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein all block caps, every other line, \u003cbr\u003ehis motions and replies--fill her\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith obscure delight?\u003cbr\u003eMust be the strangeness: his life\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003estrange to her, and hers to him, \u003cbr\u003eas she prowls the apartment with a vacuum \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein boxers (his) and bra, or flings \u003cbr\u003eherself across the bed \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith three novels to choose from \u003cbr\u003ein the delicious, sports-free \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esilence. Her dinner a bowl \u003cbr\u003eof cereal, taken cranelike, on one \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eleg, hip snug to the kitchen \u003cbr\u003ecounter. It makes her smile to think \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehe'd disapprove, to think she likes him \u003cbr\u003ealmost best this way: away. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe'll let the cat jump up \u003cbr\u003eto lap the extra milk, and no one's \u003cbr\u003ehome to scold her. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWorked Late on a Tuesday Night\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAgain. \u003cbr\u003eMidtown is blasted out and silent, \u003cbr\u003edrained of the crowd and its doggy day \u003cbr\u003eI trample the scraps of deli lunches \u003cbr\u003esome ate outdoors as they stared dumbly \u003cbr\u003eor hooted at us career girls-the haggard \u003cbr\u003ebeauties, the vivid can-dos, open raincoats aflap \u003cbr\u003ein the March wind as we crossed to and fro \u003cbr\u003ein front of the Public Library. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNever thought you'd be one of them,\u003cbr\u003edid you, little lady? \u003cbr\u003eLittle Miss Phi Beta Kappa, \u003cbr\u003ewith your closetful of pleated \u003cbr\u003eskirts, twenty-nine till death do us \u003cbr\u003epart! Don't you see? \u003cbr\u003eThe good schoolgirl turns thirty, \u003cbr\u003eforty, singing the song of time management \u003cbr\u003eall day long, lugging the briefcase \u003cbr\u003ehome. So at 10:00 PM \u003cbr\u003eyou're standing here \u003cbr\u003ewith your hand in the air, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ecold but too stubborn to reach \u003cbr\u003einto your pocket for a glove, cursing \u003cbr\u003ethe freezing rain as though it were \u003cbr\u003eyour difficulty. It's pathetic, \u003cbr\u003eand nobody's fault but \u003cbr\u003eyour own. Now \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe tears, \u003cbr\u003edown into the collar. \u003cbr\u003eCabs, cabs, but none for hire. \u003cbr\u003eI haven't had dinner; I'm not half \u003cbr\u003eof what I meant to be. \u003cbr\u003eAmong other things, the mother \u003cbr\u003eof three. Too tired, tonight, \u003cbr\u003eto seduce the father.","brand":"Modern Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305369620709,"sku":"NP9780375755408","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375755408.jpg?v=1767720931","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-working-girl-cant-win-isbn-9780375755408","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}