Working Classics: POEMS ON INDUSTRIAL LIFE

By Nicholas Coles, Peter Oresick, Catherine Anderson

Book Overview

From the cannery rows of California to the sweatshops of New York, this anthology of poems captures the drama of work and working-class life in industrial America. It speaks of rolling mills, mine shafts, and foundries, and of a people who dig coal, tap blast furnaces, sew shirts, clean fish, and assemble cars. These subjects, though largely absent from literary anthologies and textbooks, are increasingly evident in the work of contemporary poets. Working Classics gathers the best and most representative of these poems, American and Canadian, from 1945 to the present. Included are poems by Antler, Robert Bly, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Jim Daniels, Patricia Dobler, Stephen Dunn, Tess Gallagher, Edward Hirsch, David Ignatow, June Jordan, Lawrence Joseph, Philip Levine, Chris Llewellyn, Joyce Carol Oates, Anthony Petrosky, Michael Ryan, Gary Soto, Tom Wayman, James Wright, and many others. The result is a diverse and evocative collection of 169 poems by 74 poets, nearly a third of them women.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252061330
• ISBN13: 9780252061332
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

the best poetry collection ever

This is a wonderful collection from published and unknown poets about work, good and bad. I take it with me to factories and read it in hotels. These are all "blood" poems. A treasure.