''Working Classics: Poems on Industrial Life'' is a literary

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and g ...

of American

working-class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

written during the second half of the 20th century. The book identifies within post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

American literature American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the British colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also ...

an emerging trend: a new poetry about mills and mines and

blue-collar A blue-collar worker is a person who performs manual labor or skilled trades. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor. The type of work may involve manufacturing, retail, warehousing, mining, carpentry, electrical work, custodia ...

neighborhoods. Much of this verse was inspired by the postwar industrial prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s followed by rapid

deindustrialization Deindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially of heavy industry or manufacturing industry. There are different interpr ...

in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. The anthology offers nearly two hundred poems by seventy-five poets, most of whom are of the

baby boomer Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the demographic cohort preceded by the Silent Generation and followed by Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964 during the mid-20th century baby boom that ...

generation. The collection was conceived and compiled by Peter Oresick and further developed with co-editor Nicholas Coles, both of the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

. This "new work writing," argue the editors, "has its antecedents not with the

proletarian literature Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by left-wing writers mainly for the class-conscious proletariat. Though the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' states that because it "is essentially an intended device of revolution", it is t ...

of 1930s, but more with

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incor ...

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...

, the Beats, and

Confessional poetry Confessional poetry or "Confessionalism" is a style of poetry that emerged in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is sometimes classified as a form of Postmodernism. It has been described as poetry of the personal or "I", ...

." ''Working Classics'' is frequently used in U.S. and

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

university courses in

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

and

labor history Labor history is a sub-discipline of social history which specializes on the history of the working classes and the labor movement. Labor historians may concern themselves with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and other factors besides class ...

. It remains in print since its first publication in 1990 by the

University of Illinois Press The University of Illinois Press (UIP) is an American university press and is part of the University of Illinois System. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, thirty-three scholarly journals, and several electroni ...

. The anthology's strong critical reception and sales, as well as a prompt within a

book review A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is merely described (summary review) or analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review may be a primary source, an opinion piece, a summary review, or a scholarly view. B ...

of ''Working Classics'' by

Fred Pfeil John Frederick Pfeil (1949–2005) was an American literary critic and novelist. Pfeil (pronounced "file") was born September 21 in Port Allegany, Pennsylvania. He earned an undergraduate degree at Amherst College in 1971 and an M.A. at Stanford Uni ...

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...

, spawned a sequel in 1995 by the same editors called '' For a Living: The Poetry of Work''. This companion volume features poems about the nature and culture of nonindustrial work in the current

Information Age The Information Age is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on information technology ...

service economy Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments: * The increased importance of the service sector in industrialized economies. The current list of Fortune 500 companies contains more service companies and fewer m ...

, i.e. work that may be categorized as

white collar White collar may refer to: * White-collar worker, a professional who performs office-based or similar service-based jobs, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor * White-collar boxing * White-collar crime The term ...

pink collar A pink-collar worker is someone working in the care-oriented career field or in fields historically considered to be women's work. This may include jobs in the beauty industry, nursing, social work, teaching, secretarial work, or child care. W ...

, clerical, or professional.

Selected Poets in ''Working Classics''

Maggie Anderson ·

Antler Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the Cervidae (deer) Family (biology), family. Antlers are a single structure composed of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are generally fo ...

Robert Bly Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021) was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is '' Iron John: A Book About Men'' (1990), which spent 62 weeks on ...

· Jim Daniels · Patricia Dobler ·

Stephen Dunn Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939June 24, 2021) was an American poet and educator who authored twenty-one collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2000 collection, ''Different Hours,'' and received an Academy Award i ...

Tess Gallagher Tess Gallagher (born 1943) is an American poet, essayist, and short story writer. Among her many honors were a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts award, Maxine Cushing Gray Foundation Award. Biography ...

John Giorno John Giorno (December 4, 1936 – October 11, 2019) was an American performance poetry, poet and performance artist. He founded the not-for-profit production company Giorno Poetry Systems and organized a number of early multimedia poetry experim ...

Donald Hall Donald Andrew Hall Jr. (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) was an American poet, writer, editor, and literary critic. He was the author of more than 50 books across several genres from children's literature, biography, memoir, essays, and inc ...

Edward Hirsch Edward M. Hirsch (born January 20, 1950) is an American poet and critic who wrote a national bestseller about reading poetry. He has published nine books of poems, including ''The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems'' (2010), which brings toget ...

Richard Hugo Richard Hugo (December 21, 1923 – October 22, 1982), born Richard Franklin Hogan, was an American poet. Although some critics regard Hugo as primarily a regionalist, his work resonates broadly across place and time. A portion of Hugo's work ref ...

· David Ignatow ·

June Jordan June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation. Jordan was passionate about using Black English ...

· Lawrence Joseph · Philip Levine ·

Robert Mezey Robert Mezey (February 28, 1935 – April 25, 2020) was an American poet, critic and academic. He was also a noted translator, in particular from Spanish, having translated with Richard Barnes the collected poems of Borges. He was born in Philadel ...

Lisel Mueller Lisel Mueller (born Elisabeth Neumann, February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) was a German-born American poet, translator and academic teacher. Her family fled the Nazi regime, and she arrived in the U.S. in 1939 at the age of 15. She worked as a ...

Joyce Carol Oates Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels ''Black ...

Ed Ochester Edwin Frank Ochester (September 15, 1939 – August 22, 2023) was an American poet and editor. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated at Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. For nearly twenty years, Ochester ser ...

Jay Parini Jay Parini (born April 2, 1948) is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels, poetry, biography, screenplays and criticism. He has published novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, Paul the Apostle, Herman Melville, and a noveli ...

Kenneth Patchen Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of Will ...

Vern Rutsala Vern Rutsala (February 5, 1934 – April 2, 2014) was an American poet. Born in McCall, Idaho, he was educated at Reed College (B.A.) and the Iowa Writers' Workshop (M.F.A.). He taught English and creative writing at Lewis & Clark College in Portla ...

· Michael Ryan · James Scully ·

Gary Soto Gary Anthony Soto (born April 12, 1952) is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Life and career Soto was born to Mexican-American parents Manuel (1910–1957) and Angie Soto (1924-). In his youth, he worked in the fields of the San Joaqu ...

· Susan Stewart ·

Tom Wayman Thomas Ethan Wayman (born 13 August 1945) is a Canadian author. Born in Hawkesbury, Ontario, Wayman has lived most of his life in British Columbia. He studied at the University of British Columbia (BA 1966), and the University of California, ...

· James Wright ·

Robert Wrigley Robert Wrigley (born 1951 in East St. Louis, Illinois) is an American poet and educator. Biography In 1971 Wrigley was inducted into the army, filing for discharge as a conscientious objector. He received his M.F.A. in Poetry from the Universi ...

References

* *{{cite book , editor=Coles, Nicholas and Peter Oresick , title=For a Living: The Poetry of Work , location=Urbana and Chicago , publisher=University of Illinois Press , year=1995 , isbn=0-252-06410-0

External links

Look inside ''Working Classics'' at Google Books
1990 poetry books American poetry anthologies Working-class literature