Winter Issue Editorial

This issue comes out as our government, held hostage by an obstructive block of regressive extremists, is rendered increasingly dysfunctional. The false crisis of sequester and the possible further government shutdown over raising the debt limit, predicate intolerable hardship for struggling workers -- the poorest, the infirm, the unemployed, and retired people. Instead of creating jobs or addressing climate change, we will hear more demands from the wealthiest for imposing austerity, meaning the evisceration of lifeline programs including Social Security and Medicare. Meanwhile, as corporations see record profits and the stock market soars, jobs remain scarce and most of us find even the illusion of security a luxury.

Many of the poems in this issue could just as well have been written in the great depression. They speak of work related illness and of lack of medical care. They speak of the desperate invisibility of homelessness and the disillusioned poverty of old age. More importantly, they include an awareness of the global nature of exploitation; of how we are pitted against each other, our poverty underwriting the wealth that oppresses us. Poems by John Kaniecki, James Eret, and Fred Voss reject the competitive prejudice all of us are fed against immigrants, voicing the class solidarity upon which our mutual gains depend. This vital solidarity is echoed throughout this issue as is a militant commitment to the struggle for economic justice and a livable future.

Tough times are continuing, but the hardest times are often fertile ground for struggle as the illusion of individualism gives way to the necessity of community. It will take a change in attitudes and cultural consciousness to get us through to really better, secure and sustainable times. The worse things get, the more violent and reactionary the movies, music, and cultural attitudes the corporate ruling class pump out in order to fortify attitudes which undermine our unity and the class perspective that threaten their power over us.

This is why working class culture is so vital to our struggle. This is what our journal is about. There are very few venues for consistently progressive, class conscious and militant writing. This is our annual fundraising season. Tight times make supporting this project both more difficult and more vital. We are amazed to have lasted over sixteen years and honored to have published the strongest poets of our working class. We get no backing from organized labor, literary or political organizations, or universities. This is your journal. In better times your editors covered expenses from our own meager pockets but given our more tenuous economic reality, we cannot cover all the costs involved. That we have been able to continue publishing over the past few years is a tribute to the loyalty of readers who have found this journal worthy of support. We are determined, with your help, to continue.

Contest

Only four months left for entries to the Working Peoples' Poetry Contest! So far the entries are few meaning your odds are good. If you've read the Blue Collar Review and especially if you've been published in it, you have the advantage of knowing what we like.

Enter today! Send your best shot and you could be the big winner of the $100.00 prize. Winners also have their poem published on our website for an entire year and receive a one year subscription to our journal.

Only $15.00 per entry, to: "Contest" Partisan Press P.O. Box 11417 Norfolk, VA 23517

Fund Drive Kickoff

With the new year begins our fund raising season. Partisan Press is a not-for-profit press and relies on the generosity of subscribers and supporters. Contributions are tax deductible. We realize that times are tough but times like these make progressive working class literature all the more vital in promoting labor culture and the class awareness we need to resist the worst abuses of the corporate ruling class. It also provides much needed inspiration in the struggle, letting us know we are not alone.

There are very few places accepting relevant socially conscious poetry. We feel The Blue Collar Review is unique in the consistent high quality of writing we publish. Our next issue will have a contribution insert asking for your support. You needn't wait. Contributions can be made via Payal on our website (though the buttons may not work with Firefox) or by mail to Partisan Press, P.O. Box 11417 Norfolk, VA 23517. We're counting on you.

Autumn Issue Editorial

This issue marks sixteen years of publication. Over that span, our journal has chronicled the deterioration of our condition as a class within a system driven by corruption and greed at our expense. Also recorded is our resistance to abuse, exploitation, and the recent resurgence of the language of struggle in a revitalized national conversation.

What emerges in this collection is the pride of work, the desperation of being trapped in soul killing dead-end jobs, and the terrifying insecurity of joblessness. More pervasive is a dread rooted in the awareness of a worsening ecological crisis with the climate disaster of this last year culminating in the devastation of superstorm "Sandy" still fresh in our minds.

Our Fall issue has grown to focus on that solidarity; on family and the vital importance of community. The approaching winter, both seasonal and symbolic, bring us together.

The darkest days of the year are also the dying time and we remember the loss of loved ones. Over the last year we have lost some in our own community: poets Leonard Cirino, Adrienne Rich, Rane Arroyo and others. A poem I wrote in this issue acknowledges the passing of David Napolin at 92 because of a poem we published shortly after his death. We didn't know he had died, yet his words were still out there, and still are. Another poem by Teresinka Pereira marks the loss several years ago of activist and publisher Maria Montelibre. Her loss, like so many, leaves a hole in our hearts. She lives on within us, as does the truth of her words. This season reminds us of the tenuous nature of life. This journal, in spite of the tenuous nature of publishing is a collective act of resistance and there is much to resist if life, much less life of quality, is to persist.

From escalating attacks on working people in Michigan to the growing police state to the system of criminal corruption that places profit above the future of life on earth, our struggle continues. The working class militancy that appears in these pages also marked much of the last year with massive occupations which demanded the separation of wealth from power. While that movement continues to transform itself, the focus in the coming year will have to be on addressing climate change; a vital issue which is epitomizes the destructive power of the dictatorship of wealth and which has its root firmly in the class struggle.

We as a journal, and more importantly, as a community of truth-telling poets and writers have a vital role to play. The fact that more people than ever are now saying the things we were all saying sixteen years ago confirms this. It is only through community that our collective project has made it this far. We are continually thankful for your contributions and we are determined to continue.



* A note of correction, the poem, "It's Never Enough" is by poet David W. Roberts. It was wrongly attributed to Andy Roberts on the page though correct in the contents listing of the journal. Typos happen but hopefully not often.

Progressive Class Conscious Gifts

As the holiday rush is upon us, consider buying something beyond the mass produced garbage made by major corporations in sweatshops. A subscription to the Blue Collar Review is only $15.00 and lasts all year long. It is a gift which will encourage progressive thought, working class solidarity, and hopefully even inspire the recipient to write. Check out our list of strong working class poetry collections as well as our literary, political and humorous T shirts, mugs and stickers. All these affordable options support our small not-for-profit press so that we can continue to publish hard-hitting and otherwise hard to find progressive working class literature.

Summer Issue Editorial

Our summer issue of the Blue Collar Review focuses on our increasingly automated wars and the environmental devastation of our world. This collection also speaks to the precariousness of the moment and the dread of the future which permeates our psyches. Another theme which emerges is that of our nation as a prison-state. We now have a larger percentage of our people in prison than any other country -- ever. Our non-white prison population alone is larger than the total prison population of China, a nation with a much larger population not known for its civil liberties. But actual incarceration is only part of it.

Those of us with jobs feel imprisoned by them as bosses increasingly monitor us on and off the job. Work itself is becoming increasingly intolerable and alienating as our opening poems describe. For the many of us locked into seemingly permanent unemployment by age and the reality of unemployment itself, we are imprisoned by poverty and lack of access to a living, as well as lack of access to health care. Most of us, by necessity, have become imprisoned by debt.

In this issue we have a short story describing the reality and degradation of those in our prisons. Not mentioned is the use of prisoners for slave labor which benefits major corporations and feeds the growth of the prison-industrial complex.

The winner of our Working People's Poetry Contest appears in this issue. In this winning poem, "New Work Gloves" Sanford Dorbin writes of his awareness of the collapsing ecology. This poem deals with what Primo Levy described as the "gray zone" in which the poet is both victim of the larger situation of ecological collapse and participant. He is covered in sawdust having just cut down precious trees. We are all complicit to a degree in this destruction, but it is not that simple. We have to do our best to survive day to day in the world as it is. The fossil fuel industry continues to plunder and destroy the environment. With its amassed wealth, it is largely in control of our government. The corrupt system of capitalism which prioritizes profits and corporate interests over life itself stands in the way of our ability to make the changes necessary to save our civilization and the ecosystem upon which all life depends.

Both candidates in the present election are owned by and serve the same interests, including the fossil fuel industry. Republicans are more resistant to facing reality and are calling for even more coal use, less if any EPA regulations, and the ending of public support for research and implementation of alternative energy. Obama is little better, continuing to support more oil drilling and shale oil. He at least acknowledges the problem and is slightly more likely, in the inevitable natural disasters of the next few years, to address the issue. Whoever occupies the Whitehouse, we must unite and pressure them to do what is right lest the "Coming Attractions" advertised in our closing poem come to pass. I wish we had better alternatives but that would require real electoral reform and the disempowermant of corporations.

Inevitably it is We the People who will have to unite to demand real change. The social and class consciousness expressed in this collection represents a growing realization of our situation and of the need to move beyond the corporatist paradigm. That consciousness is our only hope for the future. The social movements and activism we've seen over the last year must continue and grow into a larger more unified movement. We must continue to inspire each other to actively engage in the struggle, even when it seems hopeless. Doing so is an essential role of progressive working class literature. We are grateful to be able to continue publishing it.

Review: Forgotten Dreams by Mark Gibbons

by Kurt Sobolik Working class poet, Mark Gibbons has unleashed a new book of poems courtesy of FootHills Publishing. Forgotten Dreams, it's called, where "life is a distraction on death row" and death is a carny "giving folks their screamin' money's worth." No stranger to the ass-end of a broom or the jostling wheel of a semi, Gibbons understands that for some folks recession is just another word for waking up and that rough times breed rough characters. One glance at the Lee Nye portrait on the cover will tell you this. So will this poem from midway through Gibbons' latest collection:

No Guts, No Glory--No Luck, No Shame

two boots
against the horizon
sticking out of a rooftop
ventilation shaft

two black boots
a comic strip
peace sign
except for the frozen feet inside

two snowmobile boots
ready to roll
across the skyline
on cold spoke legs

like a rigor mortis swastika
like that Mousetrap game
the tragic embarrassment
of a failed burglary

exposure captured live
on the evening news
desperation suffocating
those underclass blues

a father will try
do anything...to provide

All is not grim in Gibbons' poems, however. Sometimes his characters succeed, "create that gap for the stars / to shine on blue collar guys-- / those unshaven fat-asses / buried in the trenches" as in "After Jerry Kramer." Sometimes they rise beyond expectation as does the CAT skinner in "His Brother's Keeper" whose quick thinking saves a bluebird from the smokey chaos of a forest fire. Sometimes they simply remind us what it means to feel alive as in "Out There" or "Obituaries":

Obituaries

I'm not in the obituaries
Today, though someone my age
And several younger than me
Have left, passed on
Through the dark
And beyond
This beautiful frustration
We prance around
In--making up our stories
Of how we want it
To go, knowing how to
Modify our hearts
For the muddy roads
And bloody disappointments--
Cherishing our triumphs,
Those momentary joys
When we forget
The promises, our commitments
To servitude--slave wages
And promissory notes--
Get lost in the business
Of sensory awareness:
Bird prattle after a summer rain,
Cauliflower clouds boiling
Above the trees, deer tongues
Stretching for leaves
(Ears and tails twitching),
Alley lilacs riding the breeze.
If only for a few minutes,
Let us live, let us
Praise the day, the pulse
In our throats, let us steal
Something to love,
Let us laugh aloud, glad to be
Prodded, so gently
Goaded, into breathing--
Simply from reading
Obituaries.

Death or, more correctly, how to live in the shadow of death is often on Gibbons' mind: in "Derailed," a poem addressed to his recently departed mother, he muses, "aren't we / all orphans waiting in line?"; in "The Good, The Bad, & The Beautiful," he suggests, "the only real truth / is death"; and in "Werewolf Night," he acknowledges that "a run-down, neighborhood, / small town bar where the stools squeak / & it smells like sour beer" is sometimes the only antidote for his existential angst. While all these musings ring accurate and true to life, it's in "Cleaning Up," a poem dedicated to Jim Simmerman, the Arizona poet who killed himself, where Gibbons most deftly blends his attitudes toward life, death, work and poetry:

Cleaning Up

The lumpers think sweeping the floor is futile,
dull, degrading. I don’t mind pushing the broom:
push, push, pop, shake; push, push, pop, shake;

cement swept clean. The romance
is in the doing, in the dance, punctuated by
the finished task. Somewhere a poet pulls the trigger

on romance, puts his death in order,
the final task, blasts a dramatic exit—bullet
through the brain. Tortured Poet, my ass,

he pulls the trigger because he can,
because he’s a man who needs to end it,
needs to stop the broom from sweeping the empty room

every time he closes his eyes, where the shadows
and the whisking sounds of whispers keep
insisting it’s time to go. Sweeping is a job like breathing,

like moving a piano upstairs, like writing a poem,
it ends and begins again—another chore, a way to fill the time
they pay us for, and sweeping floors pays

more than poetry. But why try to measure
anything in coins or words? Trust your friends know
the dangers of pride and choosing the last ditch—

suicide. Every job’s the same, every job
is different. I try to stay busy when I’m alone, observe,
maybe write a poem about: broom bristles;

a pistol; the billowing dust cloud; black blood
pooled on a rug; my dust pan scraping, then rattling
against the can; BANG! The lid slammed—it’s done.

Mark Gibbons has put his back into these poems and injured himself in the process. He's not complaining though. He knows the value of sharp pains and slow aches, of bashed knuckles and bruised legs, of sweat dripping and blood trickling. Grab an end, walk backward up the ramp with him as he shoulders the load, shows you the way. Then hop up inside with him as he shifts through the gears taking you on a memorable ride through the love, loss, and wonder of life. Trust me, you'll enjoy the trip, and, in the end, you just might find yourself closer to home.

Forgotten Dreams is an 104 page hand-sewn paperbook with spine - $16.00. To see an image of the book, comments by other poets, the author's bio, excerpts from the preface and foreword, to read two more poems or to order on-line go to Foothills Publishing.
To order through mail send total price plus $1.75 Shipping and Handling for each address sent to: (NYS Residents please add $1.28 Sales Tax per book)
(Available July 21. Free shipping if ordered by July 20.)
Send orders to:

FootHills Publishing
PO Box 68
Kanona, NY 14856


Kurt Sobolik is a poet living in an area once known as Lothrop, MT. The town disappeared a century ago, but the voices remain.

Spring Editorial

This is a time of upheaval and change. The economy remains on the precipice of complete collapse leaving many of us locked out of work or hanging on to tenuous employment. An election year looms. The floodgates of corporate campaign spending opened by the Supreme court "Citizens United" ruling inundate us with misinformation meant to keep us divided. Even as the partisan chasm widens, more and more of us from right to left recognize the utter corruption of the system and are disgusted by the choices offered. On one hand we have a President morphed into Assassin-in-Chief waging drone wars, expanding a police state, and pushing a secretive "Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Pact" that further empowers corporations and would export jobs at our expense. On the other hand, we have a vicious job-murdering Wall Street Corporate Raider leading a neo-fascist party intent on attacking working people, women, and minorities. Neither candidate offers anything but more of the same and worse. It is increasingly obvious that both hands are connected to the same monster. The poems in this issue speak to that growing awareness, calling it what it is and rejecting it outright.

The increasing exploitation of working people has given rise to angry resistance to the entire corporate economic system from Quebec to Madrid to Chicago. This will no doubt escalate. The corporate ruling class, being aware of our anger, does everything it can to channel it, pushing a distorted culture of anti-social individualism loaded with judgment, fear and hate.

Though, as we witnessed in Wisconsin, their success should not be underestimated, generationally progressive consciousness is on the rise. This is not surprising because "austerity," division, corporate deregulation, and increased plunder of the economy and the planet present a future that is unacceptable. The next generation refuses to be sacrificed for the further enrichment of the few. The rest of us, already robbed, demand justice. We must not allow ourselves to become demoralized or cynical because to do so would be suicide. As poets, we must reclaim our culture and its narrative of community, solidarity and social conscience, recognizing the power of culture in defining our identity and vision. That progressive culture is vital to our struggle for a livable future. We are thankful for your support that has allowed us to continue to do our part.

Contest Reminder

The odds are good that you could be a winner. If you've been published in the Blue Collar Review and you know what we like and even if you haven't and don't. This is a good way to support our press and there is a good chance you could win $100.00 in return for your investment of only $15.00 per entry. Plus you get your winning poem online for a year! Send us your best hard-hitting working class poem and there is a good chance of being the big winner, but don't hesitate too long. The deadline is May 5th.

Winter Issue Editorial

This issue comes at the end of a mild winter on our warming world and it isn't just the climate, but the working class anger that's heating up. Though official statistics report a slight betterment of the economy for those at the top, unemployment and home foreclosures remain high. The poems in this collection describe the pride and satisfaction of productive work as well as the visceral rage at our exploitation and abuse by the greed-driven business model that ruins work as well as our health. Also emphasized are the difficulties faced by women in their primary role of caring for children and of our care-taking of aging and dying parents.

The growing recognition of the monster of brutal corporate dictatorship and the realization of an emerging police state are reflected in this collection as is our commitment to struggle for our own survival even as the corporate and religious right escalate their attacks against women, working people, and minorities.

After the birth last fall of the Occupy movement and in preparation for its inevitable and impending spring re-emergence, the power of the National Security apparatus has grown. The National Defense Authorization Act passed last December grants the President the power to detain us, citizen and non citizen alike, indefinitely without charges. Though the wording emphasizes that it is aimed at those giving loosely defined support to "associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners." many with long involvement in the government including 40 retired admirals and generals, have publicly protested this. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief counsel to Colin Powell stated that it was done as a reaction to the Occupy movement and not terrorism. In other words, the class struggle has reached the level where the government of the 1% is taking off its mask and declaring the rest of us the enemy. Our struggle to survive will continue. We have no choice. This year promises to be a turning point in the history of our country as the paradigm shift in public awareness and class consciousness runs headlong into the resistance of an entrenched corporate oligarchy that has outlived its time. This moment has been a long time in coming.

The Blue Collar Review has consistently been the journal of the 99% since 1997 and we have the back issues to prove it. We would like to think that fifteen years of publishing the strongest poets and writers of our working class has helped fertilize the seeds of this emerging struggle. Our ability to do this, and to continue doing it, relies not only on the continuing contribution of finely honed words and the perfected language of poetry, but on the financial support to actually print and mail them. The winter issue is where we traditionally begin our fund drive so we can make it through the year. Our printer is hanging on -- barely and our old computer is slow and feeble. This is a collective project. That we are still publishing is a testament to the dedication of our readers and contributors. You will find a donation request in this issue, as we had in the previous issue. We are thankful to those who already contributed. Partisan Press is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit so donations are tax-deductible. We look forward to publishing your work as well as to meeting you on the front lines of the struggles to come.

Issues

The new issue of the Blue Collar Review will be mailed on Monday, April 2nd. We have had computer issues that resulted in a corruption of our mailing list. We have reconstructed the list to the best of our ability, however, if you are a subscriber and have not received your copy by mid April, email us and we will tell you if it was mailed to you. As the Post Office is now contracting out bulk mail, the service is much worse with some areas taking much longer to deliver than others but we can confirm that it was mailed and if not, we will send it promptly. Thank you for your patience.

Adrienne Rich -- 1929-2012

Terrible news for all of us, the void left in the universal consciousness is profound. Adrienne Rich has been a mentor, an influence and voice for many of us. She embodied the enlightened philospher-poet showing the inseparability of poetry and the personal from political and global reality. Her words will continue to have a great impact. Mine are inadequate to expressing my sense of loss. We have been honored that she expressed her love and support of the Blue Collar Review over the years. She was a friend of mine.

North American Time

I
When my dreams showed signs
of becoming
politically correct
no unruly images
escaping beyond border
when walking in the street I found my
themes cut out for me
knew what I would not report
for fear of enemies' usage
then I began to wonder

II
Everything we write
will be used against us
or against those we love.
These are the terms,
take them or leave them.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.
One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love but also
did not want to kill

We move but our words stand
become responsible
and this is verbal privilege

III
Try sitting at a typewriter
one calm summer evening
at a table by a window
in the country, try pretending
your time does not exist
that you are simply you
that the imagination simply strays
like a great moth, unintentional
try telling yourself
you are not accountable
to the life of your tribe
the breath of your planet

IV
It doesn't matter what you think.
Words are found responsible
all you can do is choose them
or choose
to remain silent. Or, you never had a choice,
which is why the words that do stand
are responsible
and this is verbal privilege

V
Suppose you want to write
of a woman braiding
another woman's hair--
staightdown, or with beads and shells
in three-strand plaits or corn-rows--
you had better know the thickness
the length the pattern
why she decides to braid her hair
how it is done to her
what country it happens in
what else happens in that country

You have to know these things

VI
Poet, sister: words--
whether we like it or not--
stand in a time of their own.
no use protesting I wrote that
before Kollontai was exiled
Rosa Luxembourg, Malcolm,
Anna Mae Aquash, murdered,
before Treblinka, Birkenau,
Hiroshima, before Sharpeville,
Biafra, Bangla Desh, Boston,
Atlanta, Soweto, Beirut, Assam
--those faces, names of places
sheared from the almanac
of North American time

VII
I am thinking this in a country
where words are stolen out of mouths
as bread is stolen out of mouths
where poets don't go to jail
for being poets, but for being
dark-skinned, female, poor.
I am writing this in a time
when anything we write
can be used against those we love
where the context is never given
though we try to explain, over and over
For the sake of poetry at least
I need to know these things

VIII
Sometimes, gliding at night
in a plane over New York City
I have felt like some messenger
called to enter, called to engage
this field of light and darkness.
A grandiose idea, born of flying.
But underneath the grandiose idea
is the thought that what I must engage
after the plane has rage onto the tarmac
after climbing my old stair, sitting down
at my old window
is meant to break my heart and reduce me to silence.

IX
In North America time stumbles on
without moving, only releasing
a certain North American pain.
Julia de Burgos wrote:
That my grandfather was a slave
is my grief; had he been a master
that would have been my shame.
A poet's words, hung over a door
in North America, in the year
nineteen-eighty-three.
The almost-full moon rises
timeless speaking of change
out of the Bronx, the Harlem River
the drowned towns of the Quabbin
the pilfered burial mounds
the toxic swamps, the testing-grounds
and I start to speak again.

-- Adrienne Rich