John Henry's Partner Speaks [Paperback]

David Salner (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 108 pages
• Publisher: WordTech Communications (April 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934999113
• ISBN-13: 978-1934999110
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,883,092 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

DAVID SALNER completed an MFA degree at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and then worked for twenty-five years as an iron ore miner, furnace tender, and laborer. The people he knew during these years had a deep influence on his writing. He believes that "poetry, first and foremost among art forms, derives its creative impulse from the lives of ordinary working people. It should be a lively art form, based on the good nature and genius of humanity."

Of his first book, John Henry's Partner Speaks, Ron Offen, editor of Free Lunch, said: "David Salner has translated his original source material, related to the American folk-hero, John Henry, into a series of sometimes revelatory but always accessible and moving poems."

He is also the author of three chapbooks and his work has appeared in many journals, including North American Review, Threepenny Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, Witness, Poet Lore, and The Georgia Review. He has been awarded grants from the Puffin Foundation and The Maryland State Arts Council and was the winner of Boxcar Poetry Review's 2010 Oboh Award.

Now semi-retired, Salner divides his time between writing and volunteer editorial work in support of working class causes. He lives in Frederick Md. with his wife, Barbara Greenway, a high school English teacher. They go fishing, spend more money than they make, and look forward to visits with their daughter, Lily.

Visit his website at http://www.davidsalner.blogspot.com/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life as poetry, June 30, 2008

By 

Lily O'Brien - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: John Henry's Partner Speaks (Paperback)

David Salner's life experience working in industry across the United States comes alive for the reader in John Henry's Partner Speaks. His vivid expression and candid honesty of harsh realities working in magnesium plants and on the iron ore ranges is a glimpse into the life of the working class in this country--that Salner expresses this reality in poetry is captivating and unique.
Equally unique is the concept of speaking as John Henry's partner is the second half of the book's collection of poetry. Salner writes with such confidence, knowledge and wit of the subject, it's easy to forget the story is folklore. However in both sections Salner captivates the work conditions and friendships that cross all eras.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Truer John Henry, June 18, 2008

By 

George H. Johnson (Seattle WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: John Henry's Partner Speaks (Paperback)

If you like poetry about ordinary and not-so-ordinary working people, written well and clearly, and that makes them real, you'll probably enjoy this book.
It's a collection of David Salner's poetry that contains 41 short poems (most a page or less), and two others of 20 and 23 pages.
The short poems are about Gypsies, steel mills, miners, fathers and sons, lovers and motorcycles, gin, baseball, and a lot more. All come from Salner's life. He's worked in mines, steel mills, garment shops, machine shops, among others. Many of these poems are about these workplaces, and the people in them. They ring true.
There's tragedy, as you'd expect, especially in the mine poems. Salner writes about some long-ago deaths, and some more recent. Miners tend to think about cave-ins and other ways you can die taking unrefined substances from the earth, and miner-poets tend to write about them.
The first of the two longer poems is "In Dade Coal Mine." It tells the story of Lancaster LeConte, a former slave sentenced in 1887 to 3 years labor in Dade mine in Georgia, for having on him a watch that he couldn't prove was his. It had been given to him by his former master, Martin LeConte, a social scientist who defended slavery in his writings.
Lancaster wrote to ask Martin LeConte to tell the truth about how he came to have the watch. He never got a reply, and died in the mine in 1889.
Salner uses these facts to weave LeConte's life and death into the facts of slavery, former slaves become Union soldiers, and the re-enslavement of many former slaves into laborers in mines, timber camps, plantations, sold to private owners because they couldn't pay "debts" which often as not were fabricated. Such was one of the criminal elements of the ending of Radical Reconstruction.
The second long poem, "John Henry's Partner Speaks," retells the story about the man who died racing a steam drill, as the mythical song has it. In Salner's version, John Henry not only beat the steam drill but did it easily, and didn't die "with a hammer in his hand." Lord, Lord, no. He was killed by company thugs for resisting the layoff of the night shift.
In telling the story Salner uses the device of a supposed taped interview with John Henry's partner, Phil Henderson, to fill in the picture of the lives of former slaves like John Henry.
I especially like his comment on the song: It's for "pick and shovel men, for mule skinners, steel drivers, coal miners, blast-oven and furnace men," among others. You can work at anything and still sing it: "Even a singer can sing it, although most can't." Pow! A right to the eye to the millions of would-be folkies (and aspiring guitar pickers) who have tried to learn the song.
Those who can't sing or play it, he writes, probably don't know the kind of work "that you curse at the end of the day." But he offers them a music lesson:
". . . if you don't know the kind of work I mean,
take a nine-pound hammer
and swing it all day long.
It'll help your singing."