Poetics of Work
ByPublisher Description
A state of emergency has been declared in France. In Lyon, protesters and police clash in the streets. At the unemployment office, there are few job opportunities for poets going around. So the poet reads accounts of life under the Third Reich and in Nazi language, smokes cannabis, walks through the streets, and eats bananas, drawn by an overbearing father into a hilarious and often cynical exploration of the push to be employed and the pull to write. In this Oulipian experiment written without gender markers for its narrator, Noémi Lefebvre presents us with a comic and irreverent reckoning with the rise of nationalism and the hegemony capitalism has on our language, actions, and identities.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesPoetics of Work Reviews
“I have some mixed feelings here. I enjoyed the experimental writing style, the way it is reminiscent of stream of consciousness, with some repetitive structure or callbacks. It feels like it is written by a poet who is tired of it all, who wants to write but feels unable to (given the world they live in) but also must write because they have to. All of this is relatable. At times it feels very inspired, but at other times it feels pessimistic, or maybe reductive, or maybe pretentious, or maybe all of these things and more.
But overall, I enjoyed reading it for its unique narrative style and the relatable character being portrayed in an all too familiar setting. The writing style can feel disjointed, but is an interesting blend of poetry and traditional narrative. I definitely think “experimental” is a good descriptor here. Not a bad thing, but not for everyone.”About Noémi Lefebvre
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