THE WATERFRONT WRITERS: The Literature of Work
By
Editor Carson advises us that we won't find in this anthology of longshoremen-writers a bunch of ""'artistes' inhabiting an ivory highrise isolated and insulated from any sordid grubbing for a livelihood or the mundane facts of life""--nor ""Archie Bunkers."" What then do we find in the works of George Benet, Robert Carson, Gene Dennis, Ken Fox, Jim Hamilton, Asher Hater, Herb Mills, J. Price, and Dave Ramet? Poetry that would make old prol Harry Bridges weep for joy: ""Dig with your hooks and fingers/ One hundred and eighty pounds high/ On pallet boards and rope slingers,/ Winch them toward the sky."" Also dramatized vignettes, a screenplay, fictionalized travel diaries, and many many references to the glory days of the '34 strike. When it isn't being very macho and bristlingly pleased with itself, the material is far too mincingly, self-consciously sensitive: ""I seduce the sun/ over the shoreside hills/ with an emotional striptease.