Mayer was a marvelous poet in every stage of her long and prolific writing life, but many fans most admire her restless, powerful, sexy, and erudite early work. One of her signal elements is a certain deadpan wit, on full display here with classics such as “Lookin’ Like Areas of Kansas” or “What Babies Really Do,” or the marvelous “Essay”: I guess it’s too late to live on the farm I guess it’s too late to move to a farm I guess it’s too late to start farming I guess farming is not in the cards now… I guess farming is really out … I don’t want to be a farmer but my mother was right I should never have tried to rise out of the proletariat Unless I can convince myself as Satan argues with Eve That we are among a proletariat of poets of all the classes Each ill-paid and surviving on nothing Or on as little as one needs to survive Steadfast as any farmer and fixed as the stars Tenants of a vision we rent out endlessly.
