A thing I do from time to time is sit at the counter in a Waffle House and watch the short-order cooks. They hear orders, without writing anything down, and move constantly, not quickly, as you might imagine, but with measured efficiency, doing a few things at once, rarely messing up. No wasted effort or motion. It's what we call, "poetry in motion," a cliche, but a useful one.
In the popular imagination, and the imagination of many poets, Waffle House is as far from poetry as can be. Yet, those who know, or bother to observe, can see poetry in plumbing or short-order cooking. A skilled mechanic hears music in the car engine he can identify by make and model without seeing it. A carpenter can wax poetic about well-made kitchen cabinets and scoff at overpriced, under-quality work. I have heard that there are computer programmers who write code with a degree of elegance not necessary to get the job done, but do it anyway because of pride in their craft.
The connection between the trades and poetry is craft, the skill in making a thing. Craft isn't romantic; it involves skilled work, which takes time to learn, and time to use, much longer than jotting down a thought, breaking it into short lines with arbitrary punctuation and capitalization, and posting it to Instagram.
I'm turning 65 this year, and have written poetry since my teens, but I was too invested in the romantic mythology of inspiration to bother much with craft. My facility with language was enough to dazzle my small readership of family and friends, but little I've written so far is likely to outlive me. So now, with whatever time I'm granted, I'm taking craft more seriously, both in what I read and what I attempt to write. I can find inspiration from plumbers as much as poets. A plumbers' materials are pipes, joints and whatever else plumbers work on, while his tools are wrenches and so on; a poet's materials are words, his tools are metaphor, rhythm, irony, etc. It's takes as much skill and dedication to install a sink, sew a quilt or weave a basket as it does to write a poem. Anyone who pays attention can admire the work of all.
I was in a Waffle House last year observing the same thing. The short order cooks seemed to sit right at the tipping point of order and chaos, tempting the latter but grasping the former as orders came rolling in. There was a trainer there helping some new cooks and I asked her if I could interview her. She agreed to the conversation, but then in an email later said she was unavailable.
You nailed it... I was a cook in a fast food environment and it is indeed "poetic motion": no motion wasted, everything is relational and there is an "iambic pentameter", haiku and punctuation to getting 15 orders out with nothing cold or over-cooked and on time. I still love sitting at the counter of an "open kitchen" and watching the cooks perform their poetry.
Thanks for the introduction to Jesse Bertran! I look forward to reading his work.
I'm glad you discovered Philip Levine. He's one of my favorite poets, and I was fortunate to get to spend time with him on a couple of occasions back in the day, so I can also report that he was a great human being as well. For anyone who's curious about his writing, here's a short poem.
It is so off putting when I see a house and those little nuances missing. The assembly of a balcony it will last without rotting, the way siding and corners come together allowing for repair with nominal disruption to waterproofing. Ridge overhangs. Roof and chimney seams.
One of the partial losses from the gutting of the trades has been the loss of work-crew's mission to build something that will outlast them. When I see it well done now I want to shake all their hands.
We've also got a physical disconnect on the part of our designers. Architects want plastic decking that comes in too long, making for wastage, or try to put lime wash outside in a rainy, tropical country.
Even with sealer, that stuff has trouble with water.
Love this. The wisdom of the body, the poetry of skilled craftsmen doing their work. And the shared love between mentor and trainee. Thanks for this appreciation.
Man, this is so good. "Underneath it is the hand I read"... And on the jobsite the sounds are music and the poetic movement of tools and hands and bodies. Apprentices (and some journeymen) were amazed I could tell how they were holding tools and applying them and correct them by the sound I could hear from another room. The articulation of life is not only in words, but to articulate life in words is a gift. Yet one whose trades are both body and words we know that words are inadequate and a shadow of the lived experience. Yet the words still touch the hem of the garment of the beauty and we are healed still by them. This inspires me to revisit writing poetry instead of only prose. Thank you.
The initial Porsche mechanic I trained under couldn't read well and only used colored wiring diagrams because he didn't know the colors in German. However he knew when to use air ratchets vs hand ratchets. He knew where to put the swivel on the sequence and he could tell you about his time in the service while hand-ratcheting an open-end wrench stuck into a place he couldn't see. How I wish he had been able to write poetry. He spoke with such efficiency and patience. Much like how he wrenched.
You may also enjoy, if you continue to explore more poetry, Billy Collins and Ted Kooser. Neither are blue-collar by, errr, trade, but both have a knack for looking at "the ordinary" with fresh and clever eyes, and telling what they know and notice in a "plain way."
"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in the is world is see something and tell what it saw in a plain way," wrote John Ruskin. That is, I believe, one of the purposes of poetry. Or should be. If a poem touches no nerve, if it holds no truth for anyone other than the poet him or herself, if it lays flat on the page (that's a term coined by Donald Hall, another poet), if it is so obscure or obtuse that no emotional content can be felt when it is read, it has failed. There is an awful lot of failed poetry published!
Thank you, Jenny! Just yesterday I found another small volume of poems entitled, "Hammer: Poems" by Mark Turpin.
I think the blue collar pieces will be my gateway into the wider poetry world. I already have a frame of reference by which I can measure whether it's been said in a "plain way" that doesn't lay flat on the page.
Thank you for recommending Billy Collins and Ted Kooser!
From my years in the news business, I suspect interviews have to be arranged at the corporate level. They'll want to know what the interview would cover and what you would use the interview for, and at least review anything you write. And, as long as you're on private property, the owners have control over what you do on their property.
You’re probably exactly right. My naïveté showing through! I’d be better off finding a local mom-and-pop diner than fiddling with a corporate restaurant chain.
A thing I do from time to time is sit at the counter in a Waffle House and watch the short-order cooks. They hear orders, without writing anything down, and move constantly, not quickly, as you might imagine, but with measured efficiency, doing a few things at once, rarely messing up. No wasted effort or motion. It's what we call, "poetry in motion," a cliche, but a useful one.
In the popular imagination, and the imagination of many poets, Waffle House is as far from poetry as can be. Yet, those who know, or bother to observe, can see poetry in plumbing or short-order cooking. A skilled mechanic hears music in the car engine he can identify by make and model without seeing it. A carpenter can wax poetic about well-made kitchen cabinets and scoff at overpriced, under-quality work. I have heard that there are computer programmers who write code with a degree of elegance not necessary to get the job done, but do it anyway because of pride in their craft.
The connection between the trades and poetry is craft, the skill in making a thing. Craft isn't romantic; it involves skilled work, which takes time to learn, and time to use, much longer than jotting down a thought, breaking it into short lines with arbitrary punctuation and capitalization, and posting it to Instagram.
I'm turning 65 this year, and have written poetry since my teens, but I was too invested in the romantic mythology of inspiration to bother much with craft. My facility with language was enough to dazzle my small readership of family and friends, but little I've written so far is likely to outlive me. So now, with whatever time I'm granted, I'm taking craft more seriously, both in what I read and what I attempt to write. I can find inspiration from plumbers as much as poets. A plumbers' materials are pipes, joints and whatever else plumbers work on, while his tools are wrenches and so on; a poet's materials are words, his tools are metaphor, rhythm, irony, etc. It's takes as much skill and dedication to install a sink, sew a quilt or weave a basket as it does to write a poem. Anyone who pays attention can admire the work of all.
I was in a Waffle House last year observing the same thing. The short order cooks seemed to sit right at the tipping point of order and chaos, tempting the latter but grasping the former as orders came rolling in. There was a trainer there helping some new cooks and I asked her if I could interview her. She agreed to the conversation, but then in an email later said she was unavailable.
I still want to pick her brain.
You nailed it... I was a cook in a fast food environment and it is indeed "poetic motion": no motion wasted, everything is relational and there is an "iambic pentameter", haiku and punctuation to getting 15 orders out with nothing cold or over-cooked and on time. I still love sitting at the counter of an "open kitchen" and watching the cooks perform their poetry.
Thanks for the introduction to Jesse Bertran! I look forward to reading his work.
I'm glad you discovered Philip Levine. He's one of my favorite poets, and I was fortunate to get to spend time with him on a couple of occasions back in the day, so I can also report that he was a great human being as well. For anyone who's curious about his writing, here's a short poem.
Making it Work
by Philip Levine
3-foot blue cannisters of nitro
along a conveyor belt, slow fish
speaking the language of silence.
On the roof, I in my respirator
patching the asbestos gas lines
as big around as the thick waist
of an oak tree. “These here are
the veins of the place, stuff
inside’s the blood.” We work in rain,
heat, snow, sleet. First warm
spring winds up from Ohio, I
pause at the top of the ladder
to take in the wide world reaching
downriver and beyond. Sunlight
dumped on standing and moving
lines of freight cars, new fields
of bright weeds blowing, scoured
valleys, false mountains of coke
and slag. At the ends of sight
a rolling mass of clouds as dark
as money brings the weather in.
Good construction is poetry.
Putting the downspouts inside the concrete pillars of the house so they don't show on the outside.
Slightly inclining floors so that water runs off in the direction you need it to.
Plasterers taking the time to clean out sockets they may have gotten plaster into.
HVAC techs that recommend smaller units and shorter tubes to outdoor heat pump units.
That's better mastery of the physical than any guy with his name on a bestseller has of the English language.
It is so off putting when I see a house and those little nuances missing. The assembly of a balcony it will last without rotting, the way siding and corners come together allowing for repair with nominal disruption to waterproofing. Ridge overhangs. Roof and chimney seams.
One of the partial losses from the gutting of the trades has been the loss of work-crew's mission to build something that will outlast them. When I see it well done now I want to shake all their hands.
We've also got a physical disconnect on the part of our designers. Architects want plastic decking that comes in too long, making for wastage, or try to put lime wash outside in a rainy, tropical country.
Even with sealer, that stuff has trouble with water.
Love this. The wisdom of the body, the poetry of skilled craftsmen doing their work. And the shared love between mentor and trainee. Thanks for this appreciation.
It’s my pleasure. Thank you for giving me some of your attention.
Man, this is so good. "Underneath it is the hand I read"... And on the jobsite the sounds are music and the poetic movement of tools and hands and bodies. Apprentices (and some journeymen) were amazed I could tell how they were holding tools and applying them and correct them by the sound I could hear from another room. The articulation of life is not only in words, but to articulate life in words is a gift. Yet one whose trades are both body and words we know that words are inadequate and a shadow of the lived experience. Yet the words still touch the hem of the garment of the beauty and we are healed still by them. This inspires me to revisit writing poetry instead of only prose. Thank you.
Thank YOU, Steve. I can’t wait to read your dusty, calloused poems. 😄
Excellent writing as usual. Thanks
The initial Porsche mechanic I trained under couldn't read well and only used colored wiring diagrams because he didn't know the colors in German. However he knew when to use air ratchets vs hand ratchets. He knew where to put the swivel on the sequence and he could tell you about his time in the service while hand-ratcheting an open-end wrench stuck into a place he couldn't see. How I wish he had been able to write poetry. He spoke with such efficiency and patience. Much like how he wrenched.
No, thank you for the time spent reading and commenting!
Skilled craftsman move poetically. There's just no better way to say it.
You may also enjoy, if you continue to explore more poetry, Billy Collins and Ted Kooser. Neither are blue-collar by, errr, trade, but both have a knack for looking at "the ordinary" with fresh and clever eyes, and telling what they know and notice in a "plain way."
"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in the is world is see something and tell what it saw in a plain way," wrote John Ruskin. That is, I believe, one of the purposes of poetry. Or should be. If a poem touches no nerve, if it holds no truth for anyone other than the poet him or herself, if it lays flat on the page (that's a term coined by Donald Hall, another poet), if it is so obscure or obtuse that no emotional content can be felt when it is read, it has failed. There is an awful lot of failed poetry published!
Signed,
A poet.
Thank you, Jenny! Just yesterday I found another small volume of poems entitled, "Hammer: Poems" by Mark Turpin.
I think the blue collar pieces will be my gateway into the wider poetry world. I already have a frame of reference by which I can measure whether it's been said in a "plain way" that doesn't lay flat on the page.
Thank you for recommending Billy Collins and Ted Kooser!
From my years in the news business, I suspect interviews have to be arranged at the corporate level. They'll want to know what the interview would cover and what you would use the interview for, and at least review anything you write. And, as long as you're on private property, the owners have control over what you do on their property.
You’re probably exactly right. My naïveté showing through! I’d be better off finding a local mom-and-pop diner than fiddling with a corporate restaurant chain.