Tag Archives: Work

A Blacksmith Poem for Labor Day

A Seamus Heaney blacksmith poem for Labor Day.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , | Comments closed

Think of Work Sweat as “Odorous Oil”

Barrett Browning celebrates work in this sonnet, even as she alludes back to God’s curse on Adam in “Paradise Lost” and Genesis.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Crusoe and the American Work Ethic

A Pakistani student looks at Americans and notes their obsession with time. One can see that same obsession in Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Lying About on Labor Day

While some (like Joseph Conrad’s Marlow) regard work with reverence, others (like A.E. Housman) are irreverent and flippant.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

A Poem for Labor Day

Monday – Labor Day I can think of few poems that better capture the spirit of Labor Day than Daniel Pinsky’s “The Shirt.” I love how it moves seamlessly—I use the adverb deliberately—between the craft of labor and the conditions of labor. Sometimes we see a lovingly described piece of clothing, sometimes we hear about […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , | Comments closed

Langston Hughes on the Dignity of Work

Langston Hughes understood working men and women as well as anyone, as his poem “Brass Spittoons” demonstrates.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , | Comments closed

“Find Work,” an Answer to Every Grief?

Rhina P. Espaillat captures the ambivalent nature of work in the poem posted for Labor Day. It can be ennobling but too much emphasis on it can rob us of our humanity.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , | Comments closed

Work Makes Us Soar, Money Not So Much

In her novel “Leaps fo Faith,” Rachel Kranz helps us understand what work means to us. Citing Marx, she notes that work helps us express our essence but that, when it becomes part of the cash nexus, we find ourselves alienated from it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , | Comments closed

History from the Workers’ Perspective

Bertolt Brecht captures the spirit of May Day in “A Worker Reads History.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed