The Work Anxiety Poems

Alan Catlin, one of America's most unflinching chroniclers of working-class life, returns with The Work Anxiety Poems, a searing new collection from Roadside Press. Split into two sections-"Work" and "Anxiety"-these poems plunge into the fractured realities of labor, addiction, violence, and the uneasy dreamscapes that follow. Drawing from years behind the bar and decades of lived experience, Catlin captures the raw textures of survival: the brutal humor of late shifts, the surreal edge of exhaustion, and the persistent haunt of work that never leaves you, even in sleep. His poems unfold like noir vignettes, at once intimate and cinematic, steeped in grit, dark wit, and unshakable humanity. The Work Anxiety Poems is both a reckoning and a testament-an unblinking look at the world's underbelly and the psychic costs of endurance. Catlin's latest is essential, harrowing, and unforgettable. Alan Catlin worked for the better part of 34 years in his unchosen profession as a barman in and around the greater Albany, NY area. He has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books focusing on his work and the people he met while laboring in the trenches of bar warfare.