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    PAPERMILL
    Poems, 1927-35

    Joseph Kalar (Author), Ted Genoways (Edited by)

    9780252072000

    Paperback / softback, published 30 November 2006

    88 pages
    21 x 14 x 1 cm, 0.141 kg

    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 . . .
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