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| Albert Herter In the Name of Mercy, Give! (Red Cross Poster) 1917 lithograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Milton Bancroft Enlist in the Navy 1917 lithograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Dmitri Moor Reds vs Whites (Russian Revolutionary Propaganda Poster) 1920 lithograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| El Lissitsky Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (Russian Revolutionary Propaganda Poster) 1920 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| William Dodge Stevens Teamwork Builds Ships 1918 lithograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
Workers
I've seen bees, in the spell of a queen,
mine the clover all afternoon
and ants, those laborers, hauling crumbs
to their elaborate dwellings
and lazy crows waiting
for something to be hit by a car
so the pickings will be easy.
And knowing they have no choice
but to obey the imperatives
of their natures, I've moved on
without judgment to the flies
born to be pests and the purple martins
that eat them, and I've been amazed
by the intelligence behind such work,
what eats what, and how much,
the incredible death-work that is
the life of the universe.
And I've known the human work
that uplifts and cleanses, glassblowers
as miraculous as seeds
which hold the shape of flowers,
ordinary people who rival the ant,
who call forth in emergencies
the cockroach's genius for survival.
And I've seen the crow-people too,
the sloth-people, the hyenas,
have seen the cruelty of nature
and the cruelty of economics
merge and twist into confusion,
and have marvelled at the skunk
and its gorgeous white stripe
and its stink and have wondered
if the outlaw, in the company of outlaws,
planning his next job,
isn't the happiest man alive.
– Stephen Dunn (published in Poetry, 1981)
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| Anonymous British designer Bad Form in Dress 1916 letterpress Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Luciano Ramo Bear Down, Citizen Soldier! 1918 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Bernard Partridge Take up the Sword of Justice 1915 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Anonymous British designer Our Dumb Friends' League 1915 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| F.A. Crepaux Buy More Liberty Bonds 1918 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Rockwell Kent Supplication (Exhibition of Watercolors by Rockwell Kent) 1926 wood-engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Lucian Bernhard Advertising Poster for Adler Typewriters 1909-1910 lithograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
A Fourth Group of Verse, Section 33
Passing the shop after school, he would look up at the sign
and go on, glad that his own life had to do with books.
Now at night when he saw the grey in his parents' hair and
heard their talk of that day's worries and the next:
lack of orders, if orders, lack of workers, if workers, lack of
goods, if there were workers and goods, lack of orders again,
for the tenth time he said, "I'm going in with you: there's more
money in business."
His father answered, "Since when do you care about money?
You don't know what kind of a life you're going into –
but you have always had your own way."
He went out selling: in the morning he read the Arrival of
Buyers in The Times; he packed half a dozen samples into
a box and went from office to office.
Others like himself, sometimes a crowd, were waiting to thrust
their cards through a partition opening.
When he ate, vexations were forgotten for a while. A quarter
past eleven was the time to do down the steps to Holz's
lunch counter.
He would mount one of the stools. The food, steaming
fragrance, just brought from the kitchen, would be
dumped into the trays of the steam-table.
Hamburger steak, mashed potatoes, onions and gravy, or a
knackwurst and sauerkraut; after that, a pudding with a
square of sugar and butter sliding from the top and red
fruit juice dripping over the saucer.
He was growing fat.
– Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976)
At the Office Holiday Party
I can now confirm that I am not just fatter
than everyone I work with, but I'm also fatter
than all their spouses. Even the heavily bearded
bear in accounting has a little otter-like boyfriend.
When my co-workers brightly introduce me
as "the funny one in the office," their spouses
give them a look which translates to, Well, duh,
then they both wait for me to say something funny.
A gaggle of models comes shrieking into the bar
to further punctuate why I sometimes hate living
in this city. They glitter, a shiny gang of scissors.
I don't know how to look like I'm not struggling.
Sometimes on the subway back to Queens,
I can tell who's staying on past the Lexington stop
because I have bought their shoes before at Payless.
They are shoes that fool absolutely no one.
Everyone wore their special holiday party outfits.
It wasn't until I arrived at the bar that I realized
my special holiday party outfit was exactly the same
as the outfits worn by the restaurant's busboys.
While I'm standing in line for the bathroom,
another patron asks if I'm there to clean it.
– Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz (from Everything is Everything, 2009)
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| Maximilian Lenz Subscribe to the Sixth War Loan 1917 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Anonymous British designer Eat No Eggs In Easter Week 1916 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |