In the spirit of his Love Poems collections, as well as his wildly popular New Yorker pieces, New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize-winner John Kenney returns with a hilarious new collection of poetry--for office life. With the same brilliant wit and biting realism that made Love Poems for Married People , Love Poems for People with Children , and Love Poems for Anxious People such hits, John Kenney is back with a brand new collection that tackles the hilarity of life in the office. From waiting in line for the printer and revising spreadsheet after spreadsheet, to lukewarm coffee, office politics, and the daily patterns of your most annoying--and lovable--coworkers, Kenney masterfully captures the warmth and humor of working the "9 to 5" in today's modern era. "Kenney's sweet, funny poems about the banal and everyday—too-true nods to the intimacy of sharing a bed with someone without touching at all, or the nothing-speak of corporate communication—make great presents for spouses, friends, and work wives." —Vanity Fair “It’s a witty reflection on the humiliations of work before and during the covid-19 pandemic.” – The Washington Post “A compendium of love poems to the we-never-thought-we’d-miss-it banality of office life—and a few clearly recent additions to our ‘offices’ at home.” – Vanity Fair “The fourth installment in John Kenney’s bestselling 'Love Poems' series, this ode to office politics in the Zoom-era is spot-on, hilarious, timely, and just brilliant.” –GMA.com "The third installment in John Kenney’s hilarious trifecta of tongue-in-cheek, laugh-out-loud poems, this New Yorker contributor’s slim book pokes fun at everything we take for granted about #worklife." — Katie Couric Media “Maybe the release is perfect timing—if readers want to fantasize about falling in love over lukewarm coffee and barely legible spreadsheets.” – Willamette Week John Kenney is the New York Times bestselling author of the humorous poetry collections Love Poems for Married People , Love Poems for People with Children , and Love Poems for Anxious People , and the novels Talk to Me and Truth in Advertising , which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has worked for many years as a copywriter. He has also been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1999. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. A Q&A with the author Q: Your last collection, Love Poems for Anxious People, came out at almost the exact same time the coronavirus hit the United States. Now you have Love Poems for the Office and many offices are either closed or at least radically changed. Should you stop writing books? A: That's a great question, and you are not the first person to suggest that (my publisher, friends, readers, my parents). Q: What will your next untimely book title be? A: Love Poems for the Apocalypse. Q: I read your previous collection, Love Poems for Anxious People. A: Thank you. Q: I'm joking. I didn't. A: Oh. Q: Why offices? A: The idea was my editor's. My initial idea, Love Poems for Middle-Aged Poets Who Wish They Had Gone into Finance Instead of Poetry Because Now They Have Almost No Money in the Bank and Are Royally Screwed was rejected by my publisher. Q: Have you ever worked in an office? A: No, but I've certainly applied many times. As yet, I've not heard back. Q: What you've done in this book is take the mundane world of the office and turn that world into mundane poems. A: I think that's exactly right. Q: You have been called the greatest poet of your generation. What's that like? A: I have? I hadn't heard that. Q: Wait. Sorry. That was Mary Oliver who was called the greatest poet of her generation. No one has called you anything except for some very bad names on Goodreads. Want to hear some of them? A: I'll pass. Hold the elevator? If I am honest I did see you holding those two coffees a file wedged under one arm. Jill, right? So let me explain what happened there, Jill. I was kind of in a rush to get back to my desk, I mean. Not to a meeting or anything. Just to eat my lunch and simply space out and watch YouTube. So I had been standing in that elevator a good seven seconds which can feel like a long time in an elevator. And I'd pressed the close door button a few times (maybe ten?) when I saw you shuffling toward the elevator smiling eyes wide as if to say Hold the door? Please don't take this as a criticism but you are a slow walker, Jill. Also the doors had started to close in large part because I was pressing the close door button but making it look like I was pressing the open door button while making a face like How do these crazy buttons work?!! This is so complicated! Get the next elevator, Jill. Zoom calls in the time of coronavirus (part 1) Mary is sitting on her Peloton pedaling and talking. Ben is in his car waiting to go into a car wash. Terry is in his daughter's room surrounded by pink stuffed animals.