Hammers and Hearts of the Gods [Paperback]

Fred Voss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 4, 2009

For the past 30 years Fred Voss has worked as a machinist in various factories in California, transmuting his experiences into three books of poetry. The backdrop of much of his work is the Goodstone Aircraft Company, an oily amalgam of all the places where he has sweated it out on the shopfloor, where each man has to be a virtuoso able to temper brute force with hair's-breadth delicacy. Voss's Goodstone is a bastion of male America where bragging men dominate and cheat each other, boasting of their sexual conquests while trying to come to terms with sexual failure. In this tense, abrasive, rowdy atmosphere, suppressed violence, male bravado and sexual harassment go hand in hand. And when the wounded male lashes out, Voss is there.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Voss has driven up and down the California coast for 15 years, with a toolbox in his back seat, getting ?red and hired by various machine shops. One result is a body of poetry whose directness of address to factory experience is without parallel' - JOHN OSBORNE, Bete Noire. 'Most of the poems are vivid vignettes of factory life, but they are also much more. They comprise a wide-ranging social-political commentary that exposes class conflict, racial tension, and social injustice. The poems also deal knowingly with male woundedness, insecurity, alcoholism, grief and shame - In all the poems there is an earthy compassion that reflects a true spirituality' - TOM FULTON Fulton, Poetry Review --Poetry Review

About the Author

Fred Voss has been a machinist for 30 years, picking up the pen and the wrench to chronicle what goes on between tin walls. He has published three books of poems with Bloodaxe, Goodstone (1991), Carnegie Hall with Tin Walls (1998) and Hammers and Hearts of the Gods (2009). His work has been featured prominently by the magazines Bete Noire in Britain and the Wormwood Review in the States, and he won the 1988 Wormwood Award. Love Birds, a collaboration with his poet wife Joan Jobe Smith, won the 1996 Chiron Prize. He lives in Long Beach, California, and works in a nearby factory.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd (December 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1852248467
• ISBN-13: 978-1852248468
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #159,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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