Ten Poems About Work

(Continuation of Feb 20th post)

• "Filling Station" by Elizabeth Bishop
• "As Children Together" by Carolyn Forche
  
• "3 A.M. Kitchen: My Father Talking" by Tess Gallagher
• "The Nurse" by Dorianne Laux
• "You Can Have It" by Philip Levine
• "Sole Custody" by Joe Millar
• "Notes Between Swing and Graveyard" by John C Morrison
  
• "I Want You Women Up North To Know" by Tillie Olsen
• "Pickle Belt" by Theodore Roethke
  
• "To Elsie" by William Carlos Williams

As always, I invite folks to add to this list . . .

Working Class Fiction

I'm teaching expository writing with a thematic focus on The Working Class and I've compiled a couple lists. We've been reading from an excellent book titled Literature, Class and Culture, by which many of the following titles were found.

Ten novels about work:

• Well by Matthew McIntosh
• Yonnondio by Tillie Olsen
• Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
• Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
• Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• Daughter of Earth by Agnes Smedley
• Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Cane by Jean Toomer
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
  

Ten stories about work:

• "Mama" by Dorothy Allison
• "A Wagner Matinee" by Willa Cather
• "Life in the Iron-Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis
• Edison, New Jersey" by Junot Diaz
• "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner
• "His Own Society" by Gish Jen
• "Mint" by Craig Lesley
• "The Apostate" by Jack London
• "The Tartarus of Maids" Herman Melville
• "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen
  

Also Rebel Graphics has an amazingly comprehensive list of Working Class Literature: fiction, nonfiction and poetry. A great resource.

I invite anyone to add to this list, I could use the suggestions.

More to come (10 poems, essays, memoirs, zines and songs about work) . . .

Grammar Stuff!

Okay, every nerd must have these!

Artist, writer, and high school teacher Lee Knapp is taking the battle to preserve American language to the kitchen by creating these wonderful grammatically correct mugs, plates, and greeting cards.

My new grammar plates and mugs arrived yesterday and I LOVE them! I totally just ate an omelet on my "Lie or Lay" plate. It was glorious.

Grammarstuff.com