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| Author | Peter OresickNicholas Coles |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Working-classliterature |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press |
Publication date | September 1990 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 978-0-252-06133-2 |
| OCLC | 20753880 |
Working Classics: Poems on Industrial Life is a literaryanthology of Americanworking-classpoetry written during the second half of the 20th century.
The book identifies within post-World War IIAmerican literature an emerging trend: a new poetry about mills andmines andblue-collar neighborhoods. Much of this verse was inspired by the postwar industrial prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s followed by rapiddeindustrialization 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 thebaby boomer generation.
The collection was conceived and compiled byPeter Oresick and further developed with co-editorNicholas Coles, both of theUniversity of Pittsburgh. This "new work writing," argue the editors, "has its antecedents not with theproletarian literature of 1930s, but more withWalt Whitman,William Carlos Williams, theBeats, andConfessional poetry."
Working Classics is frequently used in U.S. andCanadian university courses inliterature andlabor history. It remains in print since its first publication in 1990 by theUniversity of Illinois Press.
The anthology's strong critical reception and sales, as well as a prompt within abook review ofWorking Classics byFred Pfeil inThe Village Voice, spawned a sequel in 1995 by the same editors calledFor a Living: The Poetry of Work. This companion volume features poems about the nature and culture of nonindustrial work in the currentInformation Age orservice economy, i.e. work that may be categorized aswhite collar,pink collar, clerical, or professional.
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| Jessica Greenbaum,The Nation[1] |
Maggie Anderson ·Antler ·Robert Bly ·Jim Daniels ·Patricia Dobler ·Stephen Dunn ·Tess Gallagher ·John Giorno ·Donald Hall ·Edward Hirsch ·Richard Hugo ·David Ignatow ·June Jordan ·Lawrence Joseph ·Philip Levine ·Robert Mezey ·Lisel Mueller ·Joyce Carol Oates ·Ed Ochester ·Jay Parini ·Kenneth Patchen ·Vern Rutsala ·Michael Ryan ·James Scully ·Gary Soto ·Susan Stewart ·Tom Wayman ·James Wright ·Robert Wrigley