Unimportant Clerks: The New York School Poets and the Culture of Bureaucracy

Examines the ambivalent, often critical relationship of the New York School poets to bureaucratic culture and the conditions of work. Unimportant Clerks identifies a central tension in the writing of the New York School poets: at times their poetry replicates the ideology of bureaucracy while at others―and more persistently―it repudiates related principles of efficiency, routine, and regimentation. Frank O'Hara, John Ashberry, Barbara Guest, James Schuyler, and Eileen Myles each had a clerical or secretarial job at the start of their professional careers. Heirs to Melville's Bartleby and antecedents of our own era of "quiet quitting," they by necessity channeled their creativity into everyday practices of refusing work. Drawing on a range of anti-work traditions, movements, and theories, Unimportant Clerks shows how their poetry reflects and contests a midcentury administrative ethos, anticipating contemporary critiques of precarity and the demands of office work.
ASIN: B0DWF6CZTQ
VSKU: BVV.B0DWF6CZTQ.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:Lagapa, Jason
Binding: Hardcover
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: Former library book with the usual stamps, stickers and labels. The item shows wear from consistent use, but it remains in good condition and works perfectly. All pages and cover are intact including the dust cover, if applicable . Spine may show signs of wear. Pages may include limited notes and highlighting. May NOT include discs, access code or other supplemental materials.