[Kate Benedict]

Ta da! My second collection is just out and for sale, though I don't even have my author's copies yet.

This book makes me one of a number of poets who have written about the world of modern work and the business office. In fact, I was one of the first to take up the task, way back in the 1970s; In Company is a distillation of poems written over the course of decades.

I suppose the subject matter might seem uninteresting to some ... but, hey, here's a book you could give to your niece the manager, your neighbor the secretary, your brother-in-law the IT guy, and they would actually appreciate it. I've gotten fan letters in response to these poems when they've appeared in print; readers want poems that reflect and illuminate their daily lives.

Some info and a few blurbs, for which I am very grateful.

Kate Bernadette Benedict
In Company
CW Books
http://www.readcwbooks.com/benedict_company.html

Amazon Link:

http://www.amazon.com/Company-Lines-...4919645&sr=1-2


Business poetry: not an oxymoron. But how do you get it right? How do you reveal the spirit of work, the unspoken connection between people, the community of it, the joy and grief, the anger and love, the celebration and disappointment, the absurd and the noble—all of that—without being either maudlin or trite? With In Company, Kate Bernadette Benedict not only proves it can be done but also how well it can be done.—James Autry

The best work poets immerse us in the sensual detail of a specific workplace, simultaneously infusing the depiction of that job with an awareness of the big picture, of what’s at stake for those who experience this employment. Kate Bernadette Benedict impressively accomplishes all this, and more. As we might expect from someone whose work record includes years employed by publishers and by a financial corporation, she combines a mastery of words and an insider’s sharp eye to portray contemporary office work—cubicles, corridors, high-rise window views, and a rigid pecking order—in a fresh and enthralling way. The poems ring with Benedict’s love of words and her skills with language take us along with her.—Tom Wayman

Kate Bernadette Benedict has done the impossible. She has written a collection of poems about office work and made it beautiful and somehow ennobling. Anyone can write about Tuscany. It takes a real poet to find inspiration in the everyday reality of working people.—Rose Kelleher

Who’d have thought it? Lurking there, beside the receptionist’s desk, next to your computer, amid the potted plants, even there at the mirror in the women’s bathroom is—the poet! Embodying thirty years of office work experience, Kate Bernadette Benedict’s In Company is an exploration in finely crafted verse of what lies below the surface of the corporate quotidian. “Profit is what I cultivate/in this green building of hermetic glass,” she writes, with characteristic elegance, “with the perfect symmetry of the crystal/ and a crystal’s fine sterility.” Enter the building, however, and you will find Eros everywhere. On the job answering phones one day, the poet is ravished repeatedly by a demon lover. The lover was poetry, and there’s been no turning back. Open this book and be similarly ravished.—David M. Katz

[Kate Benedict]

Oops, I guess this belongs in the other thread; would a mod please move it?

[Adam Elgar]

Moved - with my congratulations, Kate! Your book is clearly a great achievement!

[Mike Lane]

Kate--bravo!! It must feel great. Nice cover too.

Mike

[Lance Levens]

Kate

Kudos! I have your first book. Looking forward to reading this one,as well.
I know you're proud.

[Catherine Chandler]

Although I spent many years in the mind- and spirit-numbing environment of "the office" and would rather put that experience way behind me, I plan on buying your book, Kate, because one review states you somehow found something of beauty in it. I would have thought it an impossible task. Kudos!

[Charlotte Innes]

Congratulations, Kate! And think of all those other illustrious "business poets" you've joined... T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Dana Goia... and more... But to actually focus on the experience of work is something else. Thank you!

All best,
Charlotte

[Kate Benedict]

Ha, Charlotte. I used to tell people I was availing myself of the "T. S. Eliot solution" by writing poetry and working for a bank!

Dana has, of course, written poems about the actual experience of working in business. James Autry is famous for doing it and Richard Cole ought to be more famous for doing it. My publisher, Kevin Walzer, has a book of work poetry out. I own several anthologies of work-related poetry in which office work factors, but for some reason you find more blue collar subjects (waitressing, cab driving, salesgirl, factory) and, of course, teaching-related poems, and some doctoring, nursing, and housewifery.

If I have a complaint about the bulk of work poetry I've encountered, it's that most of it is rather prosaic. Straightforward, experiential story-telling in FV. No "umbrella ideas," if you will, and a flat tone. I promise you, In Company isn't like that.

[Risa Denenberg]

Congrats Kate! I look forward to reading it. best, risa

[R. Nemo Hill]

Congratulations, Kate.
Great conception!

Nemo