Questions:
Poetry of the Workplace
1. Analyze how poets shape their language and use different literary techniques to communicate their selected workplace themes.
2. Address any ways in which the poets' choices are especially fitting and any ways in which they are not in discussing the workplace themes. Select poems that share one or more themes to facilitate comparison.
3. Analyze the use of specific poetic techniques. All of these poetic techniques need not be addressed, as not all poems use all of them. Focus on explaining those that are most important for the poems and themes in question and the techniques that played the biggest part in your personal response to the material. Use vocabulary from the class and readings.
4. Analyze the content of the poetry. What message is the writer trying to express?
Poem:
The Song of the Factory Worker
Red brick building
With many windows,
You're like a vampire,
For wherever I go,
You know
I'm coming back to you.
You have held many under your spell.
Many who have sewed
Their life away
Within your walls.
You say to me,
"Oh, you may leave
But you'll come back. You'll miss
The whir, of the machinery,
The click of the tacker,
The happy laughter of the girls,
Telling jokes.
You'll miss the songs
They sing,
And the tired eyed ones,
Watching the clock.
The pieceworkers,
Sewing fast,
So fast that it makes you dizzy
To watch.
(They haven't time to look up.)
And under the skylight
The red-haired girl,
When the sun sets her head aflame.
You'll miss the noise and the bustle and the hurry.
And you'll come back,
You'll see."
All this and more
You say to me,
Red brick building
With many windows.
Ruth Collins
5000 apply for 100 jobs
I stood in line, drunk with the cold
shuffling towards the factory door.
Hundreds danced slowly in front of me
hundreds behind. Some of us I knew were poor
With pink skin we wore.
When the man said go home, that's it
Some kicked the ground and sword.
Others moved on quickly
Having been here before.
At least I have another job-minimum wage-
Washing windows, sweeping floors,
So I felt a bit of joy inside that big sadness,
Like Happy Hour at the goodwill store.
Jim Daniels
Me and my work
I got a piece of a job on the waterfront.
Three days ain't hardly a grind.
It buys some beans and collard greens
And pays the rent on time.
Course the wife works too.
Got three big children to keep in school,
need clothes and shoes on their feet,
give them enough of the things they want
and keep them out of the street.
They've always been good.
My story ain't news and it ain't all sad.
There's plenty worse off than me.
Yet the only thing I really don't need
Is stranger's sympathy.
That's someone else's word for
caring.
Maya Angelou