Poetry & Labor

A collection of poems, essays, and articles regarding labor related poetry and poets.

[leftpress]

Hundreds refuse to cross picket line in wildcat Crossrail strike

Mike Harman | libcom.org news | December 14th 2017

crossrail-wildcat.png

More than 200 workers at the flagship rail construction project have downed tools today in solidarity with more colleagues who have been sacked and locked out.

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[poetryandlabor]

"The Road Builders" by Voltairine de Cleyre

[poetryandlabor]

"Marsh-Bloom" by Voltairine de Cleyre

[poetryandlabor]

“Written - in - Red” by Voltairine de Cleyre

[poetryandlabor]

Often, our first introduction to poetry comes from a teacher. We must organize to protect these hard working folks--and all working people. Lecciones de lengua by Brenda Cárdenas She is proud of her papá because he comes to their little grey school, converted from army barracks, to teach español to Mrs. Brenda’s fifth grade. And that means they don’t have to listen to that awful Señora Beister on TV with her screech owl version of “Las mañanitas” and her annoying forefinger to the ear,                Escuchen and then to the lips,                y repitan.   He teaches them to order Coca-Cola en el restaurán–                Señor, quisiera una Coca, por favor– and the names of all the utensils–                cuchara, cuchillo, tenedor. The children look at him funny when he picks up the knife. Next week he will demonstrate the bullfights he watched in Mexico when he was muy chiquitito. He will choose a boy to snort, stomp, charge the red cloth that Papá will snap at his side as he dodges the sharp-horned strike, stabs invisible swords into the boy’s hide                  and makes the children laugh.

[poetryandlabor]

An Ether by Robert Vandermolen

[blackness-by-your-side]

WORD.

[swagintherain]

he does the job no one wants to do and then will be told that he’s stealing it.

[motherofpalms-deactivated202003]

The driscolls boycott is still goin on And here are ways you can help farmworkers

Donate to food chain workers alliance https://t.co/okIpzNoyEv

Donate to United farm workers https://t.co/HwgXdH4l7w

Donate to farmworker justice https://t.co/O14KKMg7KE

Donate/give supplies to migrant Farmworkers Assistance Fund https://t.co/ePbmNBVLMP

Donate to center for Farmworker families https://t.co/IReMpiEaq1

Donate to campaign for Migrant worker justice https://t.co/f2TV0Jqzd1

Donate to brandworkers https://t.co/NhTNsUrbBw

Donate to CIW https://t.co/uH5bUUGqwg

Keep in mind that Publix and Wendy’s refuse to join the fair food program

[hitthisandjustchill]

Reblogging again for the links

[kateywumpus]

Yeah. I was about to say. He’s that fast because he’s being paid by the pound, not by the hour. So he has to or else he won’t be able to make enough money to put food on the table.

[poetryandlabor]

"In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes" by Eduardo C. Corral

[poetryandlabor]

The Mortician in San Francisco by Randall Mann

[poetryandlabor]

means to an end by Gisela Kraft

[leftpress]

Supreme Court Considers Janus: Unions Need to Fight Back

Joshua Koritz | Socialist Alternative | November 15th 2017 The U.S. Supreme Court has chosen to consider a lawsuit known as “Janus V. AFSCME.” Through hearing this case, and most likely ruling in favor of it, the Supreme Court will use its power to attack union rights, to defund and weaken unions, particularly public sector unions. A favorable ruling on Janus will make it […]

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[poetryandlabor]

I urge all working people to organize in the face of the Janus decision. We are many--they are few.

"‘Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number—

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you—

Ye are many—they are few.’"

- from "The Masque of Anarchy" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

[poetryandlabor]

Thinking American by Haran Charara

[sharingpoetry]

William Carlos Williams, "Pastoral"

When I was younger it was plain to me I must make something of myself. Older now I walk back streets admiring the houses of the very poor: roof out of line with sides the yards cluttered with old chicken wire, ashes, furniture gone wrong; the fences and outhouses built of barrel staves and parts of boxes, all, if I am fortunate, smeared a bluish green that properly weathered pleases me best of all colors.                         No one will believe this of vast import to the nation.

(source, submitted by hammerduke)

[poetryandlabor]

[poetryandlabor]

[poetryandlabor]

Poet's Work by Lorine Niedecker

[poetryandlabor]

Overhand the Hammers Swing: Poem’s of Work by Philip Levine

From poets.org

What follows are images of work from contemporary American poets, that is poets contemporary to me. When I say work I mean the sort of brute physical work that most of us try to avoid, but that those without particular gifts or training were often forced to adopt to make a living in a society as tough and competitive as ours. This may in fact be a species of work that is disappearing from America as more and more automation replaces the need for human hands, that is manual labor. Perhaps the most beautiful evocation of this activity I find is in Whitman‘s great “Song of Myself”:

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil, Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is great heat in the fire. From the conder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements, The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms, Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure, They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

For Whitman this sort of work, which he liked to pretend he engaged in, is communal and harmonious; it is done with precision and craft, and the reader is left to assume that it brings to each man a sense of fulfillment as well as community. Over a century later another brilliant American poet finds two men engaged in similar labor--and though they should be even closer than Whitman’s blacksmiths, being father and son--the blows they strike are in truth meant partly for each other:

We stood on a wooden platform Facing each other with sledgehammers, A copper-tipped sieve sunken into the ground Like a spear, as we threaded on five foot Of galvanized pipe for the pump. As if tuned to some internal drum, We hammered the block of oak Placed on top for the pipe. It began inching downward As we traded blows--one for you, One for me. After a half hour We threaded on another five feet. The sweat Gleamed on our shirtless bodies, father & son tied to each other until we hit water.

(from “Song for My Father” by Yusef Komunyakaa)

Komunyakaa writes as a participant, one too busy or spent to notice the “sheer of their waists”: perhaps if Whitman’s blacksmiths had themselves written poems the overall pictures might not be so different, for they too may have felt driven by such labor deep into the self and marching “to some internal drum” or like the proud fathers of James Wright‘s poem, not marching at all but “ashamed to go home” where their “women cluck like starved pullets.”

As we shall see in the poems that follow such work often leads to despair or worse, the human body torn to shreds like the bodies of Kenneth Patchen‘s orange bears, “Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs/ seared by hot slag, their soft trusting/ bellies kicked in. . . " Patchen’s vision of the nature of labor leads him to question his master, Whitman: “What did he know about/ Orange bears with their coats all stunk up with soft coal. . . "

For Whitman such work may have led to a people and a continent fulfilled, but as we see in Snyder’s marvelous "Hay for the Horses," it can lead to more work and not much else or in the words of his sixty-eight-year- old bucker of hay, “I sure would hate to do this all my life/ And damnit, that’s just what/ I’ve gone and done.”