Filthy Labors: Poems

In Filthy Labors, Lauren Marie Schmidt draws on personal observations from her position as a poetry teacher at a shelter for homeless mothers, as well as her own roles as daughter and sister through times of family turmoil. She condemns the indignities suffered by the poor and the powerless and praises the work of those who do the caretaking. Here is poetry in the great tradition of social justice literature going back to Walt Whitman. Organized around the Catholic sacraments, these poems call upon Whitman directly, for his words replace the liturgical text of these rituals to rejoice in the redemptive power of poetry in the absence of religion’s saving grace.
 

LAUREN MARIE SCHMIDT is the author of three other collections of poetry: Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing; The Voodoo Doll Parade, selected for the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series; and Psalms of the Dining Room, a sequence of poems about Schmidt’s volunteer experience at a soup kitchen in Eugene, Oregon. Her work has appeared in journals such as North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, Nimrod, Painted Bride Quarterly, PANK, New York Quarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Progressive, among others. Her awards include the So to Speak Poetry Prize, the Neil Postman Award for Metaphor, the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, and the Bellevue Literary Review' s Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry.