The Weave Room (Phoenix Poets) - Hardcover

Chitwood, Michael

4.27

22 ratings by Goodreads

9780226103976: The Weave Room (Phoenix Poets)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226103978 ISBN 13: 9780226103976

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1998

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The poems in The Weave Room reveal the life of a textile mill as it weathers a decisive social and human moment. Whether speaking in the voice of a weaver trying to quell a crowd about to turn violent over unionization or in his own voice as one of the mill's employees, Chitwood brings together many social and historical threads to show the pattern of a people and a place that has received little treatment in American poetry.

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Review:

All Before Break Time
American Manhood Versus American Bandstand
The Choir
The Day Ending And Beginning In The Afternoon
A Dress And Some Sheets
The Early Show, Late
Entering The Weave Room
First Job
A Fixer Quits
Gear Bath
The Gift
How No Lies Were Told
In The Break Room
The Informant
Lifting
The Living
Looms
Meeting
The Men
Message Lights
Mrs. P., Who Worked In The Cloth Room, Became Famous For Her Quilts
Notes, Angle Plant, July 1978
On The Day The Oldest Textile Mill In The South Closed
On The Roof Of The Angle Plant, Rocky Mount, Virginia
The Preaching
Safety Meeting: What Counts
The Silk Mill
The Singing
Singing The 'union Song' For The Company Man
The Story
Threads, End Of Another Day
The Thunderbolts Of Zeus
Ties
Trading Out The Drapers
Union
A Union
Union Summer
Weave Room: Baptism
Weave Room: What They Say
A Weaver
The Weaving
Windows
The Women
The Words
Workers Of The World Unite
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder�

From Kirkus Reviews:

paper 0-226-10398-6 A journalist by trade, Chitwood relies on a documentarians sense of the sociological in these poems about life at a southern textile mill. His third collection blends autobiography as well, since, like Phillip Levine, he spent his own college summers working among the locals he profiles in numerous pieces: the fellow who mouths song under the looms, deafening noise (The Singing); another who worked with his eyes closed in prayer (The Preaching); the woman who made collectible quilts in her spare time (Mrs.P....); and one who had to quit because of carpal tunnel syndrome (In the Break Room.) Chitwood captures the sights and sounds of work, from bathing gears in grease to the machines endless slamming. Like Levine, though, he indulges in sentimental agitprop in poems such as The Weaving, which recalls the proletarian poetry of the 30s. Chitwoods just-folks simplicity suffers from his heavy-handed ironies, especially in poems about unionization. At best, his plaintive verse bears witness to a lost way of life. -- Copyright �1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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