A Text at Work: Two Poems

A Text at Work: Two Poems

There’s a long history of work-related poetry. The georgic mode, which dates back to Virgil’s Geogics (written 29 B.C.) primarily focused on and celebrated agricultural labor. Unlike the pastoral, which presented idealized depictions of shepherds and rural landscapes, the georgic mode focused on work and labor itself. It became even more prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries as work became more visible and laborers themselves became more literate. Working-class poets like Stephen Duck and Mary Collier used poetry to describe men’s and women’s labor-intensive lives.

Of course, poetry about work isn’t limited to stanzas about working in fields and threshing hay. Nor is it relegated to the distant past. Work poems still celebrate the everyday working life. They are still attentive to the laborers’ particular plight, to the minute detail–and now they encompass a far greater range of work.

Take, for instance, Christopher Todd Matthews’ poem “Window Washer” published in 2010. Mathews describes the window washer:

                                               “A blade,
black line against the topmost glass,
begins, slices off the outer lather,
flings it away, works inward,
corrals the frothy middle, and carves,
with quick cuts, the stuff down,
not looking for anything, beneath
or inside. Homes to the last,
cleans its edges, grooms it for
the end, then shaves it off

and flings it away.”

The window washer’s movements are precise, and Matthews’ attention to those movements reveals their artistry, their craft. The thankless task of window washing has its own beauty; this everyday work is itself meaningful.

Or consider Dorianne Laux’s “Fast Gas.” In this dramatic monologue the speaker describes her work as a gas station attendant:

“Before the days of self service,
When you never had to pump your own gas,
I was the one who did it for you, the girl
who stepped out at the sound of a bell
with a blue rag in my hand, my hair pulled back
in a straight, unlovely ponytail.”

The speaker moves on to remember an accident in which she was soaked with gasoline:

Alexandra Studio, Esso Gas Station-Avenue Road, 1959, City of Toronto Archives [Public Domain] via Flickr

Alexandra Studio, Esso Gas Station-Avenue Road, 1959, City of Toronto Archives [Public Domain] via Flickr


“And I had to hurry
back to the booth, the small employee bathroom
with the broken lock, to change my uniform,
peel the gas-soaked cloth from my skin
and wash myself in the sink.
Light-headed, scrubbed raw, I felt
pure and amazed–the way the amber gas
glazed my flesh, the searing
subterranean pain of it, how my skin
shimmered and ached, glowed
like rainbowed oil on the pavement.”

Like Matthews, Daux transforms the “unlovely” into the lovely–or, at least, she draws attention to superficiality of such labels, especially as they apply to work and workers. The girl with a plain, straight ponytail, forced to change and scrub in a tiny, ill-kept bathroom is able to find the beauty in a toxic liquid – one that burns her as she washes it off. And as Daux makes clear by the end of the poem, the speaker is beautiful, lovable: “an ordinary woman who could rise in flame.”

We often celebrate individuals with highly-recognizable accomplishments: the wunderkind who brings us a great technological advancement, the writers and artists who make our world more beautiful. But, as these poems show, less glamorous kinds of labor are no less meaningful. The people who perform the labor are no less committed to their jobs, or to making a difference in the world, or to thinking critically about that world. We know this to be true, and our seminars undergird that truth each and every day.

These poems, and many other work poems, are available in full text through the Poetry Foundation’s website. By all means, read them and think through them with us:

How does the poets’ attention to detail alter your sense of the work being performed? Do you understand it better? Or does it seem more foreign to you? If you had to describe your everyday work through minor details, what details would you describe? What often invisible tasks, like the window washer’s, do you take pleasure in? Does your work possess hidden dangers? How does attention to individual tasks and individual workers change your thinking on work itself?

Further Reading:

Toward a Theory of True Workplace Learning

How Challenging Literature Shows Deep Respect for Workers

A Text at Work: Tristram Shandy

Image: Jean-Françoise Millet, The Gleaners, 1857, Musée D’Orsay, Paris [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons


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Cecily Erin Hill

Cecily Erin Hill

Cecily Hill is the Project Director, NEH for All at the National Humanities Alliance and former member of the Books@Work team.