Pioneering: Poems from the Construction Site (Ilr Press Book) [Paperback]

Susan Eisenberg (Author)

Book Description

Series: Ilr Press Book | Publication Date: April 1998

Poems in this volume bring readers through the construction site gate alongside the women who practice a skilled trade in a dangerous industry. Assured and impassioned, the poems not only manifest outer events and day-to-day realities of the worksite but also expose through metaphor and resonant detail its high-voltage interior life.

Susan Eisenberg's early poems were private responses to the experiences of her apprentice years as an electrician. When a collection of her poems was published in 1984, Eisenberg began to receive letters from her counterparts in other trades and other regions of the country. Her ensuing dialogue with a national community of tradeswomen inspired the poems in Pioneering.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

To say that Susan Eisenberg has an unusual CV is something of an understatement: a poet, activist, teacher, and master electrician, Eisenberg has worked in the male-dominated field of construction for some 20 years. She's also published essays and criticism in magazines like The Nation and Utne Reader, created an interactive multimedia installation, and written We'll Call You If We Need You, a nonfiction book about women in construction. Published concurrently with We'll Call You, this gritty, plainspoken book of poems--her first--draws on Eisenberg's diverse experiences on the gender barricades. The poems speak with a voice that is by turns dangerous and exhilarating, rich with metaphors and unrelentingly physical--much like construction work itself. On discovering a dead rat on a job site, for instance, a male coworker hustles away the body while the poet remains behind, matter-of-factly beating maggots with a two-by-four: "I thanked / John and / bought his coffee. / I was foreman. The rat / by rights was mine." This is bleak, honest, hard-hitting stuff, powered as much by political consciousness as by the conventions of the genre.

Review

In this slim book we find, among other startling images, an electrocuted rat, an ominous male working partner with a knife, a falling body about to strike marble steps and a woman's hand cut off by a saw. Some of the poems made me wince, which I suppose is one of the things poetry is supposed to do. -- The New York Times Book Review, Samuel C. Florman

Product Details

• Paperback: 61 pages
• Publisher: Ilr Pr (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801485266
• ISBN-13: 978-0801485268
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,897,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A poet, multidisciplinary artist, author and educator, Susan Eisenberg grew up in a three-generation household in Cleveland, and raised her family in Boston. Her projects often combine or cross genres to re-imagine the everyday, playing with scale and juxtaposition to investigate issues of power and social policy.

Introduced to the craft of poetry by Denise Levertov, Susan holds a BA in Women's Studies from the University of Michigan, an MFA in Creative Writing from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a master electrician's license from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She entered the construction industry in 1978, when affirmative action opened those jobs to women, and worked fifteen years as a union electrician. She lectures nationally and internationally on issues of occupational segregation. Her nonfiction book, We'll Call You If We Need You, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book.

Susan taught creative writing for a decade at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and is currently a Resident Artist/Scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center of Brandeis University, where her projects focus on employment equity and patient-centered medical care. She has developed two touring exhibits: the photographs and poems of Perpetual Care, and the mixed media art installation, On Equal Terms, that exhibits February - May 2012 at the Michigan State University Museum of Art. See www.susaneisenberg.com for images and www.susaneisenberg.wordpress.com to join a blog conversation to Move the Decimal Point.