Paper by Ray Brown - "Working Class Poetry"

“Working Class Poetry - Bridging the Gap Between an Employee’s Essence and their Work”

“Working Class Poetry
Bridging the Gap Between an Employee’s Essence and their Work”

Abstract:

“This paper examines the role of poetry in enabling a worker to bridge the gap between their
soul, their work, their employer, and society. There is little opportunity for creativity in monotonous
Blue Collar work. Daily routines are depressing, alienating the worker from job, employer and
surroundings. The working class struggle is not only for economic mobility, but to find the means to
feel human, in an impersonal work environment with no options.

Professor M. I. Liebler’s Anthology, “Working Words Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the
Jams” and the words of 20th Century writers provide the foundation for this paper.”
______________________________________________________________________________

“You work. You work, Buddy. You work.” These are the first words from
“Grandfather’s Breath”, by Ohio poet Ray McNiece.1
Work is at the very essence of human existence. Though in early Judeo-Christian
theology it is a punishment for transgressions against the Creator - toil is how we fill our lives. If
it were not deigned by the gods, the human race would have created it to fulfill a need to satisfy a
basic longing of human existence. Work is creativity - an extension of one's personality. Work is
a means to provide dignity and meaning in life. Work therefore, is more than the essence of
human existence, it is the human condition.
Pope John Paul said:
"Toil is something that is universally known, for it is universally experienced. It is familiar to
those doing physical work under sometimes exceptionally laborious conditions. It is familiar
not only to agricultural workers, who spend long days working the land, ... but also to those
who work in mines and quarries, to steel workers at their blast furnaces, to those who work in
builders' yards and in construction work, often in danger of injury or death. It is likewise
familiar to those at an intellectual workbench; to scientists; to those who bear the burden of
grave responsibility for decisions that will have a vast impact on society. It is familiar to
doctors and nurses, who spend days and nights at their patients' bedside. It is familiar to
women, who, sometimes without proper recognition on the part of society and even of their
own families, bear the daily burden and responsibility for their homes and the upbringing of
their children. It is familiar to all workers and, since work is a universal calling, it is familiar
to everyone.”2

1|Page


Before the industrial revolution, young workers were left with few options. Honed in
their father's footsteps or indentured to learn a craft or trade - the only means for a modicum of
upward mobility.3 Each member of the household worked to help sustain the family unit.
Philosophers and theologians have contemplated the relationship of work to the human
spirit - to a person’s soul - that aspect of ourselves that links physical and earthly existence to the
eternal. Contemporary thinkers still struggle with this as the nature of work changes, with new
social dynamics and types of work.
Thomas Moore writes about the care of the soul in the workplace. Moore postulates the
need for meaning in the workplace as necessary for a fulfilled (psychologically sustainable) life.
With work often “We only consider function, and so the soul elements are left to chance. …
Where there is no artfulness about life, there is a weakening of soul...” 4. "Let us imagine care
of the soul, then, as an application of poetics to everyday life.”5
Thomas Merton's in "New Seeds of Contemplation,"6 writes: "The requirements of a
work to be done can be understood as the will of God. If I am supposed to hoe a garden or
make a table, then I will be obeying God if I am true to the task I am performing. ... He works
through me. When I act as His instrument my labor cannot become an obstacle to
contemplation, even though it may temporarily so occupy my mind that I cannot engage in it
while I am actually doing my job. Yet my work itself will purify and pacify my mind and
dispose me for contemplation."
In spite of these lofty esoteric religious statements, earlier religious doctrines, rules and
protocols, were tailored more to ensure that the early economic engines churned - rather than in
recognition of the need to satisfy human needs.7 A surf’s role was but to serve his Master,
eventually the King, a ruler who represented the deity and Its will.8 When less sophisticated,
non-Christian cultures were encountered, they were considered heathens – savages. Most viewed
as less than human -- beasts of burden - a tool in the world of work. Slavery was viewed as a part
of the natural order.9 Indentured servitude served the purposes of class and commerce.10
With the dawn of the industrial revolution, enslavement evolved from a legal concept of
non-compensated toil, to a concept of legalized, but minimally compensated, servitude. Most
workers served not only those who owned the capital but were slaves to the impersonal machines
of the workplace themselves. Monotonous, routine, tedious, physically and mentally taxing

2|Page


manual labor marked each day - not just the seven or eight hours which are a norm now -- but 12
to 16 hour days which pushed each man to the limits of human endurance.11
Political philosophers eventually struggled with responding to these deep-seeded
problems. Where a society has acknowledged the need for change, change has always been
difficult to reconcile. Slavery, indentured servitude, laissez-faire economies, had always been
posited as necessary to promote the engines that would sustain the majority of the population.12
In the late 19th and early 20th century movements took shape that directly confronted
these realities.
In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,13 Karl Marx identified four
types of alienation in labor under capitalism:

Alienation of the worker from the work he produces, from the product of his labor

Alienation of the worker from working, from the act of producing itself

Alienation of the worker from himself as a producer, from his or her "species being" or
"essence as a species".

Alienation of workers from other workers or producers”
To bridge these gaps, Marx's philosophy required an upheaval in the social structure that
could not be tolerated in most Western cultures, particular America. Change in most political
systems was gradual – except where it was implemented by force.14
What does the worker do while awaiting real change? Reconciliation of a worker and
his essence cannot be dependent upon the whim of politics. Each man, or a group of men with a
common identity, common enslavement, each worker, or a group of workers, motivated by the
basic enduring concepts of human nature, are forced to craft interim solutions, are driven to find
a way to bridge the gap, to find meaning when their work or circumstance withholds it.
Poetry played a role in fostering personal fulfillment. 15 Through the written and spoken
word, often converted to song, the words of the poet are converted to memory - move the body
and spirit – bridge the gap - promote endurance. Poetry, in the form of the time period, was
there to help an individual make it through the work day, the monotony, anxiety and pain, help a
worker endure until the last lash was received or the factory whistle blew.

3|Page


Enslaved blacks and their descendants used the arts to stay rooted to a culture from which
they had been ripped – to endure – until escape. Song, dance, storytelling, helped bridged the
gap between enslavement and identity – between the chains of work and freedom of spirit.

“boy, that old cracker said to me, what the hell
you doing sitting down in my shade?
I was real young and must not’ve known
any better so I said to him,
your shade bossman?.....
…..now you sass me one more
time, nigger,….and you see
that big limb right there over
your head?
……..that’s
when he pulled out this pistol …
I headed off into the wind….
I outrun the first piece
of lead….
….and that’s how I ended up
here in Detroit.”16

an excerpt from Migration Scene (1937), by Albert Aubert.
Or the words of Philadelphia poet, Lamont Steptoe in his poem, “Day Worker” about his
mother:
“….and much of her life would be spent on her knees in white folk’s kitchens…work with
her back to the sun with huge windows across her thighs, feet dangling inside, hands full of
damp, wet newspaper shining the thick glass…
momma…momma…after all those cold winters, after all those hot summers, after all those
years of your life you gave to those white people for our sake, how can it be that you could
teach us how to be gentle?...17

And, The Women Who Clean Fish by Erica Funkhouser:

“The women who clean fish are all named Rose
or Grace. They wake up close to the water,
damp and dreamy beneath white sheets,
thinking of white beaches.

4|Page


It is always humid where they work.
Under plastic aprons, their breasts
foam and bubble. They wear old clothes
because the smell will never go.

On the floor, chlorine.
On the window, dry streams left by gulls…

It is the iridescent scales that stick,
clinging to cheek and wrist,
lighting up hours later in a dark room.”18

Womanhood by Catherine Anderson:

“…When she enters,
and the millgate closes,
final as a slap,
there'll be silence.
She'll see fifteen high windows
cemented over to cut out light.
Inside, a constant, deafening noise
and warm air smelling of oil,
the shifts continuing on. . .
All day she'll guide cloth along a line
of whirring needles, her arms & shoulders
rocking back & forth
with the machines--
200 porch size rugs behind her
before she can stop
to reach up, like her mother,
and pick the lint
out of her hair.”19

The worker in Gary Snyder’s poem "Hay for the Horses" is bitter, when looking back on his
career:

5|Page


“’I'm sixty-eight’ he said,
‘I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done.’”20

The poet Martín Espada said in a recent interview: 21 "...I think it’s important to realize
that we can’t always see when poetry makes a difference.... What poetry does... is to change
people from within. It changes the way we think and the way we feel. It changes hearts and
minds. It creates a new way of seeing, of feeling the world, and that in turn changes the world.
...... A number of people have come to me and said, “Poetry saved my life.” Many times these
are people who have come from extreme circumstances, such as deep poverty or the prison
system, who have struggled with drug or alcohol abuse, or a history of domestic violence, and
will tell you, literally, “Poetry saved my life. I would have been dead without it. We can see
something concrete happening when, for example, prison inmates are exposed to poetry, when
a poet comes to visit, or their books are donated to the prison library. That’s an epiphany for
somebody out there…”
Today, the sweat shops, the great blast furnaces, have evolved. The worker is enslaved to
the computer, impersonal communication, interactively evaluated by the very machines they
operate - constantly observed by the cameras that film every step, in and out of the workplace.
We carry our work – carry our workplace - 24 hours a day, within devices that constantly keep
us tethered, off the clock – but not so.
Statistics reflect the lack of vocational happiness.22 Computers have become this
generation’s machines of monotony, sapping the mind of strength, emaciating the spirit --
enslaving us to the noise of electronic gadgets -- intellectual dissonance.
In the midst of all this, what does today’s worker hang on to? What is there to help
establish equilibrium – find the center of gravity – free true nature from the work which enslaves
it? The nature of the contemporary workplace solidifies the role of today’s poet as an aide to
help all vent their frustration – provide calm in a seemingly overwhelming fast paced world -
bridge the gap between his work and his soul.

6|Page


As Professor M. L. Lieber said in his anthology: 23 “So, from storytelling around the
backyard grill to sing-alongs in the family car to the blues, jazz, and rock music, to worker writer
festivals, to slam poetry and theater by and for the working class, we can usually start to
understand the very important part that art plays, and has played, in the working class throughout
the twentieth century and continues now into the twenty-first century.”24

7|Page


8|Page

1
Ray McNiece: http://www.raymcniece.com/main.htm
2
Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul, pages 38-39
3
Economic development of the United States by Isaac Lippincott; D. Appleton and company, 1921 – page 79
4
“Care of the Soul”, Thomas Moore, HarperCollins, 1993, at page 183
5
“Care of the Soul”, Thomas Moore, HarperCollins, 1993, at page xix
6
“New Seeds of Contemplation”, Thomas Merton, New Directions Publishing, 2007 at page 19

7
“Sacred Trust”, Robert Burton Ekelund, Oxford University Press, US 1996, pages 171-174
8
Castles and fortified cities of medieval Europe: an illustrated history; Jean-Denis Lepage; McFarland 2002, page 24
9
Slavery from Roman times to the early transatlantic trade”, William D. Phillips, Manchester University Press ND, 1985 -
page 17
10
“Slavery and servitude in colonial North America: a short history”, Kenneth Morgan, NYU Press 2001, pages 8-13

11
“Marx, Durkheim, Weber: formations of modern social thought”, Kenneth L. Morrison, Sage, 2006, page 36

12
Property and prophets: the evolution of economic institutions and ideologies, by E. K. Hunt, M.E.Sharpe, 2003 page 129

13
“The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844”, Karl Marx, Prometheus Books, 1988

14
“The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels;Echo Library, 2009

15
“Working Words Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams”, edited and Introduced by M.L. Liebler, Coffee House
Press, 2010
16
“Working Words Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams”, poem by Albert Aubert page 17

17
by Lamont Steptoe, “A Long Movie of Shadows”, (Whirlwind Press, Camden, NJ, 1994)
18
by Erica Funkhouser, “The Way We Work”, edited by Peter Scheckner and M. C. Boyes, Vanderbilt University Press,
2008
19
by Catherine Anderson, “The Work of Hands”, Perugia Press
20
From Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems by Gary Snyder, published by North Point Press. 1958
21
Verse Wisconsin On-Line, http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue103/prose103/espada.html
22
"Job Satisfaction." Encyclopedia of Business and Finance. Ed. Allison McClintic Marion. Gale Cengage, 2001.
eNotes.com. 2006. 4 Apr, 2011 <http://www.enotes.com/business-finance-encyclopedia/job-satisfaction
23
Press, 2010
24
Press, 2010, page xxiv

Paper by Ray Brown - "Working Class Poetry"

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Semelhante a Paper by Ray Brown - "Working Class Poetry"

Semelhante a Paper by Ray Brown - "Working Class Poetry" (13)