Tags
Inside the Money Machine by Minnie Bruce Pratt, Lesbian-feminist American Poet, The 99 Percent, Working-class life under capitalism
My Poetry Corner October 2020 features the poem “Going Out of Business” from the poetry collection Inside the Money Machine (2011) by Minnie Bruce Pratt, a lesbian-feminist award-winning poet, educator, and activist. The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection. Born in 1946 in Selma, Alabama, Pratt grew up in Centreville. She earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Alabama in 1968, where she met her ex-husband. In 1979, she took her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of North Carolina.
After her ten-year-old marriage, Pratt divorced her husband in 1975 to live as a lesbian, upending her life as a privileged white heterosexual woman. Living in Fayetteville, North Carolina, at the time, she lost custody of her two sons under the state’s “Crime Against Nature” law. Her loss and grief shaped her morality and led her to a life of activism for women’s rights and specifically lesbian rights. When she shared her emotional journey through shame and anger in her poetry collection, Crime Against Nature, published in 1990, her sons were too old for their father or the law to prevent them from being a part of her life.
After thirty years of adjunct teaching, punctuated by several stints of standing in unemployment lines, Pratt joined the faculty of New York’s Syracuse University in 2005 where she played a key role in launching their LGBT Studies Program. She retired in February 2015.
The poems in Inside the Money Machine were written during the fallout from the 2007-2009 Great Recession when 8.7 million Americans lost their jobs. Today, jobs lost during the Covid-19 pandemic more than doubles that number. Pratt’s poems focus on life for the 99 Percent of American working-class men and women during tough economic times.
We’re not machines, you know, Pratt says in the opening poem of the collection, “All That Work No One Knows.” There’s only so much we can take, / always more than we can, until we can’t… // The fumbled load we carry, the jumble, our lives unknown, / we who make and are shaped, we who hold and are held.
Workers of all kinds inhabit Pratt’s poems: people who prepare and serve our meals, farmers, supermarket check-out clerk, home health workers, office and call center workers, postal workers, hairstylist and manicurist, female ticket collector in the Turnpike booth, flight attendant, longshoreman, and more. They toil in low-paying jobs for long hours—unfulfilled, invisible, exhausted, trying to get by from day to day.
In “A Pile of Dirt at the Museum,” the poet observes:
The people stand in the photograph, in a basement or in an underground / parking lot, their arms upraised, palms flat up to hold up the weight / pushing down on them. They are pillars, the foundation, the unseen / holding up all that is visible…
The woman in “Making Another Phone Call” says her job is awful, awful, the hours, / some days nothing at all, then it’s come in / at 11 a.m. or 9 p.m., then nothing again. / The money is bad, and it’s so boring. Boring. / All she does is annoy people, calls them up / and annoys them… She wants something more meaningful in her life, but it’s beyond her reach.
In “Waking to Work,” Pratt reflects on the emptiness of our working lives. How do we go on? Longing for something bigger than us. / But not this now, not this buying and selling. If we could each / make what we can, take what we need, and that be enough—
Life is uncertain, especially during an economic crisis. Firms, large and small, go out of business. Millions are laid off and forced to join the long lines at the unemployment office. Lives are devastated. In “Getting a Pink Slip,” Pratt shares her experience of receiving hers in three ways from the school’s president: by e-mail, by phone, and then by a written letter. He’s mis-spelled my name, she recalls. In the last stanza, she notes that we lose much more than a job:
Two women lean into each other, staggered by catastrophe, / the plant fence out of focus behind them. They hold up / a crumpled paper, like the photo of some beloved lost to murder / or to war, the evidence of what lived a few minutes before: / My job, my other self.
The poet again addresses having been unemployed in “Standing in the Elevator”:
Jobless, I thought I’d never hear / our niagara of sound going up the stairs again, never step, / immersed, into tens of thousands rushing to work… // It’s never really about the money, except for the guys at the top. / They know how to make money off of us. We know / how to make things with each other. That’s what we want to do.
In the featured four-stanza poem, “Going Out of Business,” Pratt questions our way of life under our current economic system, the meaninglessness of our making only to have it tossed aside.
Time is running out for the Ames Discount Store, and we know it, that’s why we’re here, roaming back and forth, up and down the aisles, looking for something we can afford in this tomb of things made by someone else, somewhere else. I know… What will happen to all this stuff? More than we can buy, but it’s so sad to leave it behind, buried here. The days and nights someone like me sat, cut, glued, stapled, folded, hurried to finish one more piece.
In the final short poem of her collection, “If We Jump,” Pratt expresses her belief that we have what it takes to add meaning and value to our lives not found within our current economic system. It’s up to us to make it happen.
Let new words leap out of our mouths. Let our hands be astonished at what we have made, and glad. Let us follow ourselves into a present not ruled by the past. If we jump up now, our far will be near.
To read the complete featured poem, “Going Out of Business,” and learn more about the work of the poet Minnie Bruce Pratt, go to my Poetry Corner October 2020.
Bon Repos Gites said:
A powerful post!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Thanks! So glad you stopped by 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bon Repos Gites said:
You are most welcome 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
winteroseca said:
That’s a great background and poem!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Thanks very much, Winteroseca!
LikeLiked by 1 person
winteroseca said:
You’re welcome!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Danielomastix said:
Thanks for introducing us to this! I cannot believe that in 1975 there was a thing called “Crime Against Nature” legislation that could be used to deprive a woman of contact with her children (and of course, deprive children of contact with their mother). Appalling!
Hope you are weathering the pandemic OK!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
This was news to me, too, Daniel. I’ve read that this law has since been ruled as unconstitutional following the 2004 Lawrence v. Texas case.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Laleh Chini said:
So powerful.👏👏👏👏
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Thanks very much, Laleh 🙂 It’s a powerful poetry collection, still very much relevant today. I had difficulty in selecting just one poem from the collection.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Laleh Chini said:
Wow🌺
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, Another Blogger said:
People who have had steady, decent-paying jobs for much of their lives sometimes forget how fortunate they are and have been. Me included.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
So true, Neil. I’ve had some tough times in Brazil and here in the USA. I am blessed that my sons are now both doing what they enjoy and earning relatively decent incomes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
rothpoetry said:
Very interesting story… love the last line… if we jump up now, our far will be near…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Thanks for reading, Dwight 🙂 We’ve got lots of jumping up to do to catch up with changes needed for just and equitable work spaces for all.
LikeLiked by 1 person
rothpoetry said:
yes, for sure!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
jfwknifton said:
Here in Merrye Englande we’ve finally learnt to leave people alone and let them get on with their own lives.
In the immortal words of HG Wells, “You can do what you like, so long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
John, HG Wells’ remark made me laugh 🙂 We humans have done so much harm with our intolerance towards those who differ from us.
LikeLike
derrickjknight said:
Minnie and her family clearly had powerful emotional journeys – hers shines through in the compassion in her work
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
I agree, Derrick. It’s through our losses, pain, and grief that we learn compassion.
LikeLiked by 1 person
cath said:
Love this, Rosaliene, both the poems and the concept. Thanks for the introduction.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Cath, I’m glad that you can appreciate Pratt’s poetry 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
drgeraldstein said:
A courageous woman. Thank you, Rosaliene. Some of your readers might be interested in hearing this “Great Depression” song, one that became, in effect, the anthem of that dreadful period, “Brother Can You Spare a Dime:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4yT0KAMyo
Many of the most popular singers of the time sang it. The link above takes you to the version by Al Jolson.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
She is a courageous woman, indeed, Dr. Stein. Thanks for sharing the link to the Great Depression song. The depression that Pratt writes about is the more recent 2007-2009 financial crisis, but the lyrics work just the same.
LikeLiked by 1 person
drgeraldstein said:
I was thinking more in terms of the Depression Era’s comparison to today. That song may have a comeback if the federal government doesn’t stimulate the economy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
JoAnna said:
We need these words about the value of all workers now more than ever. My 30 year career as an addiction counselor in a nonprofit started out very meaningful. The intrinsic stress was expected and manageable. But the last ten years became increasingly miserable with growing bureaucracy and a top heavy corporate mentality demanding more billable productivity, things that seem to infect many larger companies today. I’ve heard it’s gotten even worse since I left. Front line workers seem to be less important to top management far removed. Makes bartering sound good.
I love the photo of Ms. Pratt with her sons.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
JoAnna, thanks for sharing your experience of a work environment turned toxic for the sake of billable productivity. As family-owned businesses are forced out of the market dominated by the large corporations, our workplaces have become more toxic and cruel in the drive for reduced costs and increased profits. As Pratt says in her poem, “All That Work No One Knows,” there’s a limit to what we humans can take and endure.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pam Lazos said:
I worry about the future of America and returning to a time when “crimes against nature” was a prosecutable offense. We have gone so far off the rails. It’s heartening to see that by sticking to your beliefs, you can truly still create the kind of life you want to live. So happy for Professor Pratt that she found her voice and has been afforded and opportunity to speak it. Thanks for this post, Rosaliene.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Pam, thanks for sharing your concern about returning to a time of “crimes against nature” law enforcemnt and your praise for Pratt’s achievements. There’s a news report today that may bring about much needed change within the Catholic Church and among other Christian churches worldwide. During an interview for the documentary film Francesco, which premiered today at the Rome Film Festival, Pope Francis voiced his support for same-sex unions: “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.” There will no doubt be push-back from the ultra-conservatives within the Catholic Church. Let’s wait and see.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pam Lazos said:
Oh my, how much do I love Pope Francis!!?! ❤️ 💕 💗 The other week he decried ultranationalism. He’s truly the voice of reason. Thanks for sharing that tidbit of information, Rosaliene! 😘🙏
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
My pleasure, Pam 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Pam Lazos said:
💗
LikeLiked by 2 people
DutchIl said:
Thanks for sharing!!.. today’s knowledge and technology has uncovered many things in today’s world societies… hopefully the world will use that technology and knowledge and make changes for this world to be a better place.. unfortunately, technology has also given voice to those who do not want change… “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom”. (Isaac Asimov)… 🙂
Until we meet again..
May the dreams you hold dearest
Be those which come true
May the kindness you spread
Keep returning to you
(Irish Saying)
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Dutch, thanks for sharing your thoughts and for your kind wishes ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
cigarman501 said:
Thanks for sharing. I can’t imagine the pain involved in coming out in Fayetteville, NC in the late 80s…who am I kidding. Now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Thanks for stopping by, Don. I imagine that it can’t be easy anywhere, any time. Many die with their secret.
LikeLike
Rebecca Cuningham said:
Thanks for introducing me to another powerful poet!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Rebecca, I’m glad that you’ve found Pratt’s poetry powerful 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rebecca Cuningham said:
She was able to channel difficult life circumstance (losing her children!) and forge it into beauty.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
So true, Rebecca!
LikeLiked by 1 person
AnuRijo said:
powerpacked lines..thanks for sharing…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Anu, thanks for stopping by and reading 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
AnuRijo said:
😊🌝keep going 👍🏻👍🏻
LikeLiked by 1 person
Crystal Byers said:
I love how you continue to introduce me to such powerful voices. Minnie Bruce Pratt. Outstanding!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Thanks, Crystal 🙂 So glad you’ve enjoyed Pratt’s work!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Pallavi said:
Indeed powerful!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rosaliene Bacchus said:
Pallavi, thanks for the visit 🙂 I’m glad that you also see the power in Pratt’s work.
LikeLiked by 1 person