The Golden Book of Words - Softcover

Mayer, Bernadette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811239683 ISBN 13: 9780811239684

Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2025

Synopsis

This landmark early book (its original printing by Angel Hair Books was 750 copies, and they are now extremely rare) by the late great Bernadette Mayer is finally available again, both as a tribute and a joy to read. Mayer was a marvelous poet in every stage of her long and prolific writing life, but many fans most admire her restless, powerful, sexy, and erudite early work. One of her signal elements is a certain deadpan wit, on full display here with classics such as “Lookin’ Like Areas of Kansas” or “What Babies Really Do,” or the marvelous “Essay”: I guess it’s too late to live on the farm I guess it’s too late to move to a farm I guess it’s too late to start farming I guess farming is not in the cards now… I guess farming is really out … I don’t want to be a farmer but my mother was right I should never have tried to rise out of the proletariat Unless I can convince myself as Satan argues with Eve That we are among a proletariat of poets of all the classes Each ill-paid and surviving on nothing Or on as little as one needs to survive Steadfast as any farmer and fixed as the stars Tenants of a vision we rent out endlessly

About this title

About the Author

Called “a consummate poet” by Robert Creeley, Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1945. A most prolific poet, her first book was published at the age of twenty-three. Many texts later she continues to write progressive poetry from her home in East Nassau, New York. For many years Mayer lived and worked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where she was the Director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project from 1980-1984. Bernadette Mayer has received grants and awards from PEN American Center, The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art, the NEA, The Academy of American Poets, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811239683
• ISBN 13: 9780811239684
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80