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PAPERMILL: Poems, 1927-35
Unlike many of the protest poets of the Depression era, Joseph Kalar lived the workingman's life he wrote about. Though he produced some of the finest social protest writing of his era, the circumstances of Kalar's life--his tireless work in the unions, his long hours at the mill--meant that he wrote only occasionally and never published a book.
Papermill is Kalar's most famous poem, a stark description of a shut-down factory. First published in 1931, the poem was praised by Max Eastman as "the rarest jewel so far produced by the ferment in America called proletarian poetry--and it is pure art."
Stink from papermill, sulfer dioxide,
burns the nose and wreathes the mind
with thoughts of beaters to be filled
pumping jordans, swish swish of hot rolls,
paper to be made, the crash of spruce,
furred brances stabbing here and there,
the arm caught pulpy in the rolls,
the finger, lost . . .
Papermill is Kalar's most famous poem, a stark description of a shut-down factory. First published in 1931, the poem was praised by Max Eastman as "the rarest jewel so far produced by the ferment in America called proletarian poetry--and it is pure art."
Stink from papermill, sulfer dioxide,
burns the nose and wreathes the mind
with thoughts of beaters to be filled
pumping jordans, swish swish of hot rolls,
paper to be made, the crash of spruce,
furred brances stabbing here and there,
the arm caught pulpy in the rolls,
the finger, lost . . .
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 6, 2022
Didn’t want to put this in the star rating system but now, apparently, you have to in order to write a review? Boo.
“Not to be believed, this blunt savage wind
Blowing in chill empty rooms, this tornado
Surging and bellying across the oily floor
Pushing men out in streams before it”
Kalar, a life-long sawmill and papermill worker and one of the Pre-WWII proletarian poets, wrote about work in the bleakest reaches of the Midwest during the Depression. & my interest is in following a thread of poets working the inglorious parts of the publishing infrastructure—typesetters, warehouse workers, papermill workers. The lines are spare, evocative, and profane. There’s fight and bitter wit in the poems but Kalar lands most often in despair and disgust. & perhaps that's supposed to volatilize readers. Though his disgust for drunks and tramps does just seem like the standard moralizing of the employed against the “idle.”
There’s a fascinating almost obsessive use of fatness, thinness, and guts that reveal an intense anxiety over what manual labor and poverty do to the body.
Can see how a later wave of late 70s, 80s poets writing narrative poems about work could look back to Kalar with interest and take the same sort of immutability of working class life but swap out the barbed arc of his poems for some lyric grace notes, a more normy reader (& mainline lit mag) friendly move. Finding, also, resonances between Kalar's poems and work in the Iron Moon anthology.
“Not to be believed, this blunt savage wind
Blowing in chill empty rooms, this tornado
Surging and bellying across the oily floor
Pushing men out in streams before it”
Kalar, a life-long sawmill and papermill worker and one of the Pre-WWII proletarian poets, wrote about work in the bleakest reaches of the Midwest during the Depression. & my interest is in following a thread of poets working the inglorious parts of the publishing infrastructure—typesetters, warehouse workers, papermill workers. The lines are spare, evocative, and profane. There’s fight and bitter wit in the poems but Kalar lands most often in despair and disgust. & perhaps that's supposed to volatilize readers. Though his disgust for drunks and tramps does just seem like the standard moralizing of the employed against the “idle.”
There’s a fascinating almost obsessive use of fatness, thinness, and guts that reveal an intense anxiety over what manual labor and poverty do to the body.
Can see how a later wave of late 70s, 80s poets writing narrative poems about work could look back to Kalar with interest and take the same sort of immutability of working class life but swap out the barbed arc of his poems for some lyric grace notes, a more normy reader (& mainline lit mag) friendly move. Finding, also, resonances between Kalar's poems and work in the Iron Moon anthology.
August 18, 2009
Although the book is titled "Papermill", being an "Iron Ranger" myself, there are several works regarding the Iron Range of Minnesota that I found especially touching of the sense of the places and the people.
June 16, 2016
No small thing to have Kalar's work saved thanks to Nelson, Genoways, et al.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews