M. L. Liebler
USA
|
M. L.
Liebler is a internationally known & widely published
Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist
and arts organizer, and author of thirteen books including
the Award winning Wide
Awake in Someone Else's Dream (Wayne
State University Press 2008) featuring poems written in and
about Russia, Israel, Germany, Alaska and Detroit. Wide Awake
won both The Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence
and The American Indie Book Award for 2009. In 2005, he was
named St. Clair Shores (his hometown) first Poet Laureate. Liebler
has read and performed his work in Israel, Russia, China,
France, UK, Macao, Italy, Germany, Spain, Finland, The West
Bank, Afghanistan and most of the fifty states. M.L. Liebler
has taught English, American Studies, Labor Studies,
Canadian Studies and World Literature at
Wayne State University in Detroit since 1980, and he is the
founding director of both The National Writer's Voice
Project in Detroit and the Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit
Writers Literary Arts Organization. www.mlliebler.com |
Making It
Right
(Lines Composed After Being Asked to Lecture
on Labor in Detroit During the Depression at The Amerika Haus
Lecture Series in Munich, Germany 2004)
“You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you.” Philip Levine
I bring no poetry
today
From the oil and
grease
Soul of my Detroit.
This history I am
is
Only, and nothing
more,
Than the son of an
auto worker.
Just another
Detroit man beaten
Down by the
tortured years
Of Depression,
World Wars
And the awful angst
of unemployment.
This is my story
without balance
Weighing heavier on
the side
Of heartache and
less on the side
Of the sacred and
glorious.
This is my story of
what no work is
And what it can do
to the
Working class in
the darkness
Of our
desperation.
I wish, now, I did
have some
Kind of a poem to
say aloud,
Right here—to make
you
All understand what
is inside
The blackened heart
and under
The whittled bones
of the people
Who have been left
behind
In the ashes of the
plant. I guess
I could read you a
poem about how labor
Takes a boy and
makes him a worker
Before he is
allowed to become a man.
How the factory
humiliates
And intimidates all
people
With endless
assembly and useless work.
How the line takes
one ounce
Of every soul lived
for every
Minute it is sped
up to completion.
How Henry Ford’s
great innovation
Doomed generations
to continuous
Monotony in the
name of “making a living.”
But, I am afraid
that I can only bring
The small news of
what becomes of people
Who work hard with
greasy hands.
About people who
learn that their reality is
Having their names
spelled out in factory
Smoke long before
they were born. A birthright
For workers to
endure through
The long loneliness
of industry
And unemployment
lines where
We wait and wait
for our
Bread and roses to
fall from the sky
Like beads of
perspiration upon our graves.
We dream that,
maybe, prosperity
Is really just
around the corner. So we
get up every
morning with hope, and
We return each
night to the broken houses
Of our lives,
seldom realizing that it is our
Labor that keeps
this whole world together.
I guess, in the
end, we do not know
What work is, but
still we continue to
Do it over and over
and over, making it right.
Page 2
© Copyright, 2012,
M. L. Liebler
.
All rights reserved. |