Temporary Worker Rides a Subway

by Mark Wallace

A Temporary Worker Rides the Subway presents two long poem -sequences that explore and question contemporary language surrounding money and work. Using a widely varied set of poetic forms, Wallace highlights the inconsistencies and absurdities in contemporary notions about the degree to which money and work provide the value of people’s lives. Selected by Nick Piombino, this book is the 2002 winner of the Gertrude Stein Award.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2001

About the author

Mark Wallace was born in 1962 in Princeton, New Jersey and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Between the ages of 8 and 17, with his father and brother he drove across the United States to Southern California on camping trips every summer, once going by way of Mexico City and once by way of Lake Banff, and he has spent time in all 48 of US mainland states.

The numerous bad jobs he has worked since the age of 15 are distinguished not by working class physical labor but by the low paid tedium of the contemporary world’s bureaucratic nightmare.

He received his Ph.D. from the State University at Buffalo with his dissertation The Gothic Universe in the Fiction of Paul Bowles and William Burroughs. He worked at Buffalo as a student assistant to Charles Bernstein on "The Wednesdays At Four Plus" reading series.