Working Classics

Working Classics, Poems on Industrial Life, Peter Oresick and Nicholas Coles,  Editors, University of Illinois Press, 1990, paperback $19.60

    These are tough tough poems about work life, some written by poets whose names we all recognize – Robert Bly, Thomas Wayman, and Brendan Galvin, but many penned by relative unknowns.   If you’ve ever worked in a factory, as I have, a lucky one who was assigned to the production control office, then later a consultant to steel mills, airplane and electronics factories, you’ll recognize the gray monotony of the line, the tired, limited off-hours allotted to “life,” the overwhelming loss of control one feels confined to a work station eight or more hours at a time.  Every industry has its tellers, from Carl Sandburg’s stockyards, to Thoreau’s family pencil factory, and in this collection of Working Classics you’ll find 169 poems from 74 tellers.  

This book is number five on my Gift Book list because it’s the one that I have carried through years of airport lounges and hotel rooms.  I like to have it with me when I leave a factory and get lost in the seasonless air of glass-enclosed spaces.  It reminds me of what so many workers have submitted to, and not a few have beaten, if only for a few singular years out of a lifetime at the mill. 

There are four poems about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, including this one by Mary Fell: Section 3. Asch Building:            In a window,            Lovers embraceHaloed by light.He kisses her, holds herGently, lets her goNine stories to the street.Even the small onesPut on weightAs they fall. Some of these poems were written from photographs, and many came from hard-earned personal experience, including “Night Shift At The Plating Division Of Keeler Brass” by James B. Allen; “Mining Camp Residents, West Virginia, July, 1935,” by Maggie Anderson;”Two Pictures Of My Grandparents: 1914” by Joseph Bruchac;  “4th Of July In The Factory,” “After Work,” “Digger Goes On Vacation,” “Factory Jungle,”  “ Factory Love,” “Hard Times In The Motor City,” and “Still Lives In Detroit: #2, Parking Lot, Ford Sterling Plant,” by Jim Daniels.  This collection is worth carrying through airport security to read in your hotel room – beats anything on the web or on HD-TV and they’ll stay with you longer than this morning’s USA Today waiting outside your door.Work, life, hope.***