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A Working Girl Can't Win
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.
- GenresPoetryNonfictionAmerican
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
May 15, 2020
My mom gave me this collection for my 24th birthday. I was a City Year corps member doing a second year of service in Philadelphia. I remember loving the poems because they seemed so New York, or what I imagined being a young woman in NYC would be like in my 20s. I would never know because I planned to move back home to RI after that year of service. But these poems seemed glamorous and raw. Back then they probably were, but I cringe as I read them now. This came out in '98 but it's more evocative of the previous decade. Like the 80's these poems are self-indulgent. They're not well written, and it's awful to revisit what the office was like back before the Me Too Movement and all the other shifts that happened in-between. I wish I didn't reread it so could keep on remembering it fondly.
January 5, 2008
These poems aren't completely terrible but they aren't particularly good, either. They read kind of like Sex in the City, minus the sex, the humor, or anything else interesting, distilled into the poetry of, say, Billy Collins.
January 3, 2013
"Is this the birth of a pundit
or a slut? Is she the woman they courted for her youthful edge
or a kiss-and-tell bimbo,
a careerist coquette?
The loyal daughter to spin doctors
losing their hair or soul sister
to feminist essayists everywhere?
Is her meteoric rise the source
of her potential demise?
Is her worldview equal parts
yuppie whine and new-age rumor?
Can we get a biopsy on her latest
breast tumor? Is she a failed
anorexic, or diet-pill faddist
who'll let it all go and get fat
in her fifties? Are her roots
rural, right-leaning? Is she Jewish,
self-hating? Past her sell-by date,
or still ovulating?
Will her husband talk?
Does he mind her success?
Does anyone know - does he see
her undressed? Has she been
photographed? Will she play
truth or dare? And more to the point,
does anyone care?
Come next year, will the masses
be reading her story? Will she be
on the cover, or well past her glory?
Either way, we'll move on, and she'll tire
before long: only her children will grieve
at the way she was wronged."
or a slut? Is she the woman they courted for her youthful edge
or a kiss-and-tell bimbo,
a careerist coquette?
The loyal daughter to spin doctors
losing their hair or soul sister
to feminist essayists everywhere?
Is her meteoric rise the source
of her potential demise?
Is her worldview equal parts
yuppie whine and new-age rumor?
Can we get a biopsy on her latest
breast tumor? Is she a failed
anorexic, or diet-pill faddist
who'll let it all go and get fat
in her fifties? Are her roots
rural, right-leaning? Is she Jewish,
self-hating? Past her sell-by date,
or still ovulating?
Will her husband talk?
Does he mind her success?
Does anyone know - does he see
her undressed? Has she been
photographed? Will she play
truth or dare? And more to the point,
does anyone care?
Come next year, will the masses
be reading her story? Will she be
on the cover, or well past her glory?
Either way, we'll move on, and she'll tire
before long: only her children will grieve
at the way she was wronged."
May 19, 2022
Fuck yeah.
I was on the third poem when I looked up and said to the wind, "Is she rhyming?" and I started the poem over and reread the first two and I said aloud, "She IS rhyming?" I've read some poetry and most modern stuff doesn't meter. It was surprising to encounter.
Very much feminine poems. This isn't Mary Oliver writing about nature or Louise Gluck writing about the universe. These are poems about a woman's experience. I hopped that I wasn't one of the a-holes in these stories, but I probably am. That's why we have this stuff, so we can see us-we in an unfavorable mirror.
Really touching and moving stuff though. It reminded me of Debora Eisenberg.
I was on the third poem when I looked up and said to the wind, "Is she rhyming?" and I started the poem over and reread the first two and I said aloud, "She IS rhyming?" I've read some poetry and most modern stuff doesn't meter. It was surprising to encounter.
Very much feminine poems. This isn't Mary Oliver writing about nature or Louise Gluck writing about the universe. These are poems about a woman's experience. I hopped that I wasn't one of the a-holes in these stories, but I probably am. That's why we have this stuff, so we can see us-we in an unfavorable mirror.
Really touching and moving stuff though. It reminded me of Debora Eisenberg.
October 13, 2015
I've read this volume over and over and over again, I just read it again today when I found it by chance at the bottom of a basket of old mail. This was the poetry that opened the door poetry for me. I struggled all through college with poetry. Then I found "A Working Girl Can't Win" on my lunch break at a formerly lovely little bookstore [for Wilmington Delaware residents - The 9th Street Bookstore used to carry a very respectable collection of poetry - my adult immersion in poetry after I read Deborah Garrison was all courtesy of The 9th Street Bookstore. They now carry almost no poetry and NO living poets. It's a travesty].
These poems are bitter and sweet and sexy and sad and fierce. These are still my favorite group of poems, but they gave me a greater gift, they demystified poetry for me somehow - opened the door to a whole world, and for that I will be forever grateful to Deborah Garrison and the working girl who never wins.
These poems are bitter and sweet and sexy and sad and fierce. These are still my favorite group of poems, but they gave me a greater gift, they demystified poetry for me somehow - opened the door to a whole world, and for that I will be forever grateful to Deborah Garrison and the working girl who never wins.
February 16, 2009
Cute, funny, with flashes of profundity. Even if I did wind up hating the speaker for her arrogance. I still have this on my personal poetry shelf after ten years.
April 6, 2012
this book is juvenile, self-indulgent, uninventive, unexploratory, surface-level. get over it.
August 14, 2021
Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Deborah Garrison worked on the editorial staff of 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒀𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒓 for fifteen years and is now the poetry editor of Alfred A. Knopf and a senior editor at Pantheon Books. She lives with her husband and three children in Montclair, New Jersey.
𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝑳𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒐𝒏 𝒂 𝑻𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕
Again.
Midtown is blasted out and silent,
drained of the crowd and its doggy day
I trample the scraps of deli lunches
some ate outdoors as they stared dumbly
or hooted at us career girls-the haggard
beauties, the vivid can-dos, open raincoats aflap
in the March wind as we crossed to and fro
in front of the Public Library.
Never thought you'd be one of them,
did you, little lady?
Little Miss Phi Beta Kappa,
with your closetful of pleated
skirts, twenty-nine till death do us
part! Don't you see?
The good schoolgirl turns thirty,
forty, singing the song of time management
all day long, lugging the briefcase
home. So at 10:00 PM
you're standing here
with your hand in the air,
cold but too stubborn to reach
into your pocket for a glove, cursing
the freezing rain as though it were
your difficulty. It's pathetic,
and nobody's fault but
your own. Now
the tears,
down into the collar.
Cabs, cabs, but none for hire.
I haven't had dinner; I'm not half
of what I meant to be.
Among other things, the mother
of three. Too tired, tonight,
to seduce the father.
Highly recommended! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝑳𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒐𝒏 𝒂 𝑻𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕
Again.
Midtown is blasted out and silent,
drained of the crowd and its doggy day
I trample the scraps of deli lunches
some ate outdoors as they stared dumbly
or hooted at us career girls-the haggard
beauties, the vivid can-dos, open raincoats aflap
in the March wind as we crossed to and fro
in front of the Public Library.
Never thought you'd be one of them,
did you, little lady?
Little Miss Phi Beta Kappa,
with your closetful of pleated
skirts, twenty-nine till death do us
part! Don't you see?
The good schoolgirl turns thirty,
forty, singing the song of time management
all day long, lugging the briefcase
home. So at 10:00 PM
you're standing here
with your hand in the air,
cold but too stubborn to reach
into your pocket for a glove, cursing
the freezing rain as though it were
your difficulty. It's pathetic,
and nobody's fault but
your own. Now
the tears,
down into the collar.
Cabs, cabs, but none for hire.
I haven't had dinner; I'm not half
of what I meant to be.
Among other things, the mother
of three. Too tired, tonight,
to seduce the father.
Highly recommended! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 13, 2025
Another collection that will be purged from my shelves. I'm sure I picked this up from a bargain table or bin (I don't remember what we called those bargain carts that came in every so often filled with miscellaneous titles, usually no more than $1.00).
I'm not familiar with Garrison as a poet, or writer for that matter, and since this was published in 1998, I don't know that I've heard or read her name anywhere else.
This doesn't mean she's a bad poet. Her poems in this collection are interesting only for the perspective of an urban working woman (Garrison was living in Manhattan at the time of publication) and the poems are certainly reflective of that environment.
It's also a chronicle of the relationships with males, bosses, ex-lovers, ex-husbands, husbands. They're not bad poems (all of them in blank or open verse), typical of the poetry we were writing in the late 1990s when poetry slams were a thing. It's just that there's a sameness to the poems and nothing feels new as the collection continues. Urban working girl problems.
The collection will go into the donation or pop-up bin.
I'm not familiar with Garrison as a poet, or writer for that matter, and since this was published in 1998, I don't know that I've heard or read her name anywhere else.
This doesn't mean she's a bad poet. Her poems in this collection are interesting only for the perspective of an urban working woman (Garrison was living in Manhattan at the time of publication) and the poems are certainly reflective of that environment.
It's also a chronicle of the relationships with males, bosses, ex-lovers, ex-husbands, husbands. They're not bad poems (all of them in blank or open verse), typical of the poetry we were writing in the late 1990s when poetry slams were a thing. It's just that there's a sameness to the poems and nothing feels new as the collection continues. Urban working girl problems.
The collection will go into the donation or pop-up bin.
October 5, 2020
I heard of Garrison in college, she might have even come to my campus and done a reading. Whatever the case, I have her book for some reason, and I remember thinking her poems were cutting-edge and really spoke to me back when I was in my early 20's. Reading them now as a 35 year old, they seem uninspired and maybe not really poetry.
Listen: It's not a poem
just because you space out
lines in every three
paragraphs and write
things about sunsets
and umbrellas and coffee.
There's this awful line: "like the prow of a boat without / its boat behind" and then this cliche about a woman pulling off her dress "so you couldn't say if she was / appearing or disappearing."
I did like the title poem, though, especially the subtle rhyming throughout. I also liked the poem, "Husband, Not at Home" where the husband is compared to a soldier "gone to the litigation wars" and the poem "The Warning" where an older male colleague confides in the narrator about his "dead marriage" and she treasures that conversation years later, thankful it wasn't true of her and her spouse.
Listen: It's not a poem
just because you space out
lines in every three
paragraphs and write
things about sunsets
and umbrellas and coffee.
There's this awful line: "like the prow of a boat without / its boat behind" and then this cliche about a woman pulling off her dress "so you couldn't say if she was / appearing or disappearing."
I did like the title poem, though, especially the subtle rhyming throughout. I also liked the poem, "Husband, Not at Home" where the husband is compared to a soldier "gone to the litigation wars" and the poem "The Warning" where an older male colleague confides in the narrator about his "dead marriage" and she treasures that conversation years later, thankful it wasn't true of her and her spouse.
April 21, 2019
This is a short collection of poems by Deborah Garrison, it was originally published in 1998. Garrison sounds like a very interesting woman, worked at The New Yorker as part of their editorial staff, and now poetry editor at Knopf and senior editor at Pantheon Books.
These poems are inspired by her own experiences, it is clear after reading a bit if her bio. They touch subjects as grief, professional life as a female from an interesting sort of dual perspective, which is her same approach to married life and juggling her various responsibilities as a female/wife/professional/mom.
Unapologetic, fleeting feelings put down on paper, everyday flat thoughts vs well thought out pieces. It was a funny, frustrating, emphatic Sunday read.
These poems are inspired by her own experiences, it is clear after reading a bit if her bio. They touch subjects as grief, professional life as a female from an interesting sort of dual perspective, which is her same approach to married life and juggling her various responsibilities as a female/wife/professional/mom.
Unapologetic, fleeting feelings put down on paper, everyday flat thoughts vs well thought out pieces. It was a funny, frustrating, emphatic Sunday read.
May 27, 2017
A well-earned four stars, though a bit front-loaded. Not too formal or old-fashioned, but not experimental just for the sake of being different. Accessible and human, despite the New Yorker connection.
Favorites:
"Long Weekend at Your House"
"November on Her Way"
"She Was Waiting to Be Told"
"A Working Girl Can't Win"
"Perfectionist on the Beach"
a dirty wind from the subway grate
blows my skirt up, and I feel vulgar
- "The Firemen"
as she prowls the apartment with a vacuum
in boxers (his) and bra, or flings
herself across the bed
with three novels to choose from
- "Husband, Not at Home'
Favorites:
"Long Weekend at Your House"
"November on Her Way"
"She Was Waiting to Be Told"
"A Working Girl Can't Win"
"Perfectionist on the Beach"
a dirty wind from the subway grate
blows my skirt up, and I feel vulgar
- "The Firemen"
as she prowls the apartment with a vacuum
in boxers (his) and bra, or flings
herself across the bed
with three novels to choose from
- "Husband, Not at Home'
February 19, 2020
I saw this book at a thrift store for $1.50. The cover featured the striking, stark black and white Irving Penn photo of two ultra-thin women sitting at a table smoking cigarettes. The inside back cover said the author was an editor at The New Yorker and that her poetry had appeared there. Perhaps, then, my expectations were too high, but I don’t think I got a bargain. I’m not sure these many of these are poems. They look like poems on the page but don’t “sound” like poems to me. I may be wrong; I’m not an expert on poetry and poetry is always changing. However, I also suspect the corporate workplace doesn’t easily lend itself to poetry although some of her observations are interesting.
February 19, 2025
I read A Working Girl Can’t Win to prepare for a podcast where I was paired with Deborah Garrison, and I honestly had no idea it was written in 1998 because it holds up so well. The collection captures the push and pull of ambition and love (all kinds, not just romantic) in a way that still feels relatable today.
As a 30-something myself, I was just as connected to most of these poems as I would with a contemporary collection. Garrison’s voice is sharp, witty, and effortlessly intimate, making everyday moments feel both deeply personal and universally understood. Her words resonate whether she’s writing about office life, relationships, or the quiet womanhood complexities of growing up.
As a 30-something myself, I was just as connected to most of these poems as I would with a contemporary collection. Garrison’s voice is sharp, witty, and effortlessly intimate, making everyday moments feel both deeply personal and universally understood. Her words resonate whether she’s writing about office life, relationships, or the quiet womanhood complexities of growing up.
October 15, 2023
the poems aren’t bad, but aren’t the best. i picked up this book at a second hand bookstore and was intrigued with the title but sadly the poems didn’t end up being what i was hoping. the message was there but the wording and writing i feel needed more. it felt as if something was missing from each poem.
April 5, 2022
this would have changed my life if i was born twenty years earlier. definitely invokes the raw and painful frustration of being a woman in a male-dominated field, as well as the almost whimsical ennui of domestic life. liked it, not groundbreaking.
May 5, 2017
These poems are reports of what life is like for this working girl and it includes a lot of the injustices all too common in this society. Very clear and pointed.
July 9, 2017
Re-reading this. I found at Joseph-Beth years ago. My favorite is "Fight Song": "The beauty is/ they'll soon forget you."
December 29, 2017
Highly recommend!
September 13, 2022
ahead of its time, but the writing turned...different at the end. Fully appreciate the intent given the date it was published and that made me give it a star higher.
December 9, 2022
really excellent and thoughtful collection ❤️
December 6, 2023
I grabbed this at the library because I wanted to read some poems.
January 7, 2024
probably my fav poetry ever because it's so relatable and the cover art is so good
June 4, 2024
“You can’t be nice to everyone.”
February 19, 2025
The poetry was alright. I couldn't really relate.
March 20, 2025
R.I.P Olivia Pope you would’ve loved this poetry collection
November 11, 2025
a handful of these are fabulous but the titular poem is horrible
Read
December 24, 2025A writing teacher recommended this to me two years ago and I can’t remember why. Kind of mid.
November 28, 2017
A very quick read that didn't leave a lasting impression. Some poems I liked and other poems weren't great. This was a hit or a miss for me.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews