‘Scraping Away’ a sharply serrated book of poems
The French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville, reflecting in the 1800s upon the egalitarianism that the United States claimed was core to its identity as a nation, wrote in his classic work “Democracy in America” that in such an atmosphere of perceived equality “man’s hopes and desires are oftener blasted, the soul is more stricken and perturbed, and care itself more keen.”
In other words that oft-quoted and shining testimonial from the Declaration of Independence that insists that “all men are created equal” is a double-edged sword. As the sociologist Paul Fussell wrote in his definitive study “Class: A Guide Through the American Status System,” “disillusion and bitterness are particularly strong when you find yourself trapped in a class system you’ve been persuaded isn’t important.”
This is the beating, brawling heart of poet Fred Shaw’s debut full-length collection, “Scraping Away.” Shaw currently teaches creative writing at both Point Park University and Carlow University, but for many years he worked in the food service industry. Shaw mines his blue-collar upbringing and the sweat-soaked grind of kitchen work to create a sharply serrated book of poems.
“Scraping Away” is both angry and artful in its depiction of class in America, a country that has always been squeamish about admitting that different social classes even exist much less that moving up the rungs is largely unachievable for much of the citizenry. Striving, as Shaw sees it, is an intrinsic part of our national character:
And when the boss said to hustle, I wore a ready smile and worked without pause, buffing
lipstick from wine glass rims, scooping up
what was left behind — spoons and mugs half-full of cold coffee,
chicken bones and change, once a slimy denture. (from “Curse”)
Cleaning up the dregs, however, exacts a hefty toll that sometimes is paid in blood, and in the poet’s case a kind of bleak mordancy:
Over the years, I’ve found myself sweating beside others
in hot restaurant kitchens. A few of them will succeed
at murder, suicide, or dying in their sleep. A strange pride wells up when I come across
their names in the paper. (from “The World Feels Small after Shaking Hands With Bruno Sammartino”)
It is revealing that in the poem “José at the Yum-Yum Café” Shaw offers the gift of a poetry collection (a shoplifted
copy at that) to his friend José to help with his “broken English.” In a bit of dark humor Shaw admits the book was by Charles Bukowski, a poet known as much for his irascibility and drunkenness as he was for his unadorned and approachable language. Shaw writes, “it’ll be a helpful and amusing way / to learn the syntax of broken promises / and understand a language of despair.”
Recalling José’s journey to America from Costa Rica and the thousand dollars he paid to be smuggled across the border “in the back of an aluminum U-Haul,” Shaw reconsiders and concedes that José “already understands.”
It is in poems such as this one that Shaw interrogates the very idea of poetry itself as a signifier of social class. Access to and ownership of language is a theme Shaw has woven deeply into these poems. The lead-off poem, “Argot,” states this explicitly when Shaw writes that the working life “takes what it wants, stealing my pen.” Later in the same poem the reader is introduced to Shaw’s mother, who also worked in the food industry:
On her days off,
Mom wants to play Scrabble but instead, we talk about our fingers, how they’ve split into open-flowered nerves,
stinging our bodies ...
Language here is reserved for those people who have the leisure time to claim it. This idea is reduced to an authoritarian simplicity in two lines from “The Paper Signs,” a poem that shares the posted rules in one restaurant kitchen: “Keep your mouths shut / and do work.”
Fred Shaw’s poems hold no punches. They shine with blood and sweat, and in their honesty and love for the world they depict, the poems of “Scraping Away” burst from the page like “something alive and escaped.”
Kristofer Collins is the books editor for Pittsburgh Magazine. His latest book, “The River Is Another Kind of Prayer: New and Selected Poems,” was published earlier this year.
“SCRAPING AWAY: POEMS”
By Fred Shaw CavanKerry Press ($16)