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The Job of Being Everybody
Poetry. "Douglas Goetsch is, without a doubt, an unbridled creative talent. His pinpoint lyricism and apparent reverence for craft stamp his work with a gorgeous signature, and he just gets better with every outing. These are poems of desire and disappointment, the magnificent and the mundane—and in Goetsch's capable clutches, each one leaves an electric charge in the air. This is no misty-eyed look at where poetry has been or where it's going. THE JOB OF BEING EVERYBODY is where poetry should be, where it should have been all along."—Patricia Smith
"The gritty naturalism of these poems would qualify them as 'anti-lyrical' were it not for the mix of sweet nostalgia and bitter truth that gives them their pungent, winning flavor. It's hard to imagine a reader who could resist Goetsch's seductive opening lines."—Billy Collins
"Douglas Goetsch's autobiographical poetry is so consistently bleak, I'm not quite sure why I so often find it moving. I guess partly because the poetry seems so free from baloney, and because there is a sweetness down inside Goetsch's insistence on the factual."—Mark Halliday
"The gritty naturalism of these poems would qualify them as 'anti-lyrical' were it not for the mix of sweet nostalgia and bitter truth that gives them their pungent, winning flavor. It's hard to imagine a reader who could resist Goetsch's seductive opening lines."—Billy Collins
"Douglas Goetsch's autobiographical poetry is so consistently bleak, I'm not quite sure why I so often find it moving. I guess partly because the poetry seems so free from baloney, and because there is a sweetness down inside Goetsch's insistence on the factual."—Mark Halliday
- GenresPoetry
59 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
16 people want to read
About the author
Diana Goetsch
12 books47 followersPreviously wrote under the name Douglas Goetsch.
Diana Goetsch is an American poet, author of eight collections, including In America (a 2017 Rattle Chapbook Prize selection), Nameless Boy (2015, Orchises Press) and The Job of Being Everybody, which won the 2004 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Competition. Her poems have appeared in leading magazines and anthologies including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review and Best American Poetry.
She is also a nonfiction writer and columnist, author of essays on subjects ranging from baseball history to medical ethics to political messaging. From 2015-16 she wrote the “Life in Transition” blog at The American Scholar, where she chronicled her gender transition, along with issues faced by America’s newest visible minority. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Donald Murray Prize for writing pedagogy, and a Pushcart Prize.
For 21 years she was a New York City public school teacher, at Stuyvesant High School, where she taught gifted and mostly immigrant children, and at Passages Academy in the Bronx, where she ran a creative writing program for incarcerated teens.
Diana Goetsch is an American poet, author of eight collections, including In America (a 2017 Rattle Chapbook Prize selection), Nameless Boy (2015, Orchises Press) and The Job of Being Everybody, which won the 2004 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Competition. Her poems have appeared in leading magazines and anthologies including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review and Best American Poetry.
She is also a nonfiction writer and columnist, author of essays on subjects ranging from baseball history to medical ethics to political messaging. From 2015-16 she wrote the “Life in Transition” blog at The American Scholar, where she chronicled her gender transition, along with issues faced by America’s newest visible minority. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Donald Murray Prize for writing pedagogy, and a Pushcart Prize.
For 21 years she was a New York City public school teacher, at Stuyvesant High School, where she taught gifted and mostly immigrant children, and at Passages Academy in the Bronx, where she ran a creative writing program for incarcerated teens.
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June 8, 2013
I met Doug at the North Wildwood Beach Writers' Conference in June 2013, where we were both teaching. I was blown away by his faculty night reading, and then by his class on "Opening Claims." I think you'll feel the same way about the marvelous work in this collection. It's muscular and lyrical at the same time, and just pulls you in and won't let you go. My personal favorite was the title poem, as I tend to have the same job!
Displaying 1 of 1 review