Works & Days

Author: Gina Myers

Publisher: Radiator Press (2025)

“Gina Myers’ Works & Days registers all the hours we’ve lost to working; it also registers the continuous urge to want more from life than just sustaining oneself with a paycheck. Myers guides us through a number of ekphrastic reference points, including episodes of The Twilight Zone, Marx’s work, Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and the films Alien and Aliens, allowing us to see that at least we’re part of a trajectory. Works & Days desires something else, and it buoys us as we all try to find our collective footing amidst our exhaustion and our hope. I love this book.”

—Marie Buck

“‘What is it that keeps you alive’ asks the final line of Gina Myers’ Works & Days. From TED Talks on gratitude and ‘Motivational Monday’ emails from her boss to punk and country classics seemingly spinning endlessly on a jukebox in a working-class neighborhood bar, Myers has created nothing short of a poetic catalog of gig economy work. These sharp and sentient poems detail and celebrate the daily anti-celebrations of our wasted working lives.”

—Mark Nowak