The first poetry book I’m recommending in 2024 is Pittsburghese by Robert Gibb, published by Michigan State University Press/Wheelbarrow Books on January 1. Pittsburghese is part elegy for the no-longer steel mills and part ode to the inhabitants of Pittsburgh and nearby Homestead. As a person who grew up in a dying mill town (Woonsocket, RI), I felt a deep connection to the displaced blue-collar and pink-collar workers in these plucky, utterly unsentimental poems. The book is a testament to a disappearing slice of Americana. Here’s a sample:
Frances Perkins at the Homestead Post Office
Her tricornered hat’s all but trademarked,
Her suits well-cut and suitably dark.
Patrician disguise for our one great
Secretary of Labor, the tireless tony agitator
With her firm, man-the-barricades touch.
In 1933 she’s in Homestead drumming up
Support for the newly established steel
Code and the agencies of the New Deal.
The borough hall’s packed, with hundreds
More locked out— “undesirable reds,”
According to the burgess who refuses
To admit them or permit her the use
Of the stairs in front. Nor is Frick Park’s
Municipal block ordinanced for such talk,
Or so they’re insisting when she sees
The post office and thinking federal property
Simply sets up shop within its haven.
(Clerks and customers, their startled faces,
My Uncle Arch looking up from his desk.)
The cops are fuming, as is the burgess,
But there’s not much they can do now,
Even though theirs is a company town.
How close she came, during her tenure,
To putting paid to such places forever.
Minimum wage, overtime, social security . . .
A storm of progress to the angel of history,
The debris of paradise scattered about
The aggrieved, beseeching crowds.
Congratulations, Robert!
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Author: Denise Duhamel
