Some of the Times
Some of the Times by Gina Myers, graduate ’05, Creative Writing at The New School
Barrelhouse, 2020
Those who are familiar with Gina Myers’s previous work will be pleased to see Some of the Times build from the same base of social consciousness while also pushing in new directions. Myers captures what it feels like to live in this era of late capitalism in a way that few other poets do. This is a book for those who suffer and endure and laugh about the suffering later.
“A daughter of deindustrialized Saginaw, Gina Myers is sensitively attuned to forms of capitalist ruin: the city long after the factory closes, the wage earner barely getting by in a shit job. Whether surveying the blight and arson of her hometown or settling into a gentrifying Philadelphia, Myers tallies the manifold promises capitalism offers and never keeps: “There is an anger I carry/inside that I will never/let go of. Something basic/to hold onto while everything/else disappears.” A daybook of alienated labor and catcalls, chronic illness and summer heat, bad Philly landlords and losing sports teams, Some of the Times is also a daybook of pleasures leveraged against exploitation and misogyny, songs a worker sings to survive her work, songs a lover sings to guard her heart.” –Brian Teare