Inside the Money Machine

by Minnie Bruce Pratt

Inside the Money Machine is poetry for the immense majority for those who work for a living, out of the house or at home, from the laundromat to the classroom, from blue-collar construction sites to white-collar desk jobs. These fresh, gritty and passionate poems are about the people who survive and resist inside the money machine of 21st-century capitalism: those who've looked for work and not found it, who've held a job but wanted more out of life, who believe a better world is still possible. Inspired by the poetic prose of The Communist Manifesto, Inside the Money Machine draws its power from Pratt s own working life and grass-roots organizing, and the struggles of neighbors, co-workers, political activists and loved ones. Pratt writes from inside the failing money machine: The problem is, the plan is not ours. In the tradition of the socially engaged poetry of Muriel Rukeyser and Langston Hughes, Nazim Hikmet of Turkey and Pablo Neruda of Chile, these poems speak to the unfinished work of this moment in history, in a way that poetry seldom does. Inside the Money Machine urges: Let us follow ourselves into a present not ruled by the past.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Politics

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Minnie Bruce Pratt (b. September 12, 1946 in Selma, Alabama) is an U.S. educator, activist, and award-winning poet, essayist, and theorist. Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, grew up in Centreville, Alabama and graduated with an honors B.A. from the University of Alabama (1968) and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina (1979). She is a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University where she was invited to help develop the university’s first Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Study Program. She emerged out of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s and 1980s and has written extensively about race, class, gender and sexual theory. Pratt, along with lesbian writers Chrystos and Audre Lorde, received a Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett award from the Fund for Free Expression to writers "who have been victimized by political persecution." Pratt, Chrystos and Lorde were chosen because their experience as "a target of right-wing and fundamentalist forces during the recent attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts."[1] Her political affiliations include the International Action Center, the National Women's Fightback Network, and the National Writers Union. She is a contributing editor to Workers World newspaper. Pratt's partner is author and activist Leslie Feinberg.
[from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnie_B...]

Reviews

[jo ☾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing and intensely moving collection. Everything from health care to wage slave struggles. Every poem either touched a soft spot or transported me somewhere else entirely. Two thumbs up!

[Devin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Minnie-Bruce is a poet revolutionary and this is another example of that. Her words, the capture of the quotidian life that capitalism tosses to us as a crumb from their table, resonate deep with all of us who have been overworked, exploited, and underpaid.

[jac · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Put me in the furnace, and that little pile of bone and mineral - throw me onto the garden, or pour and mortar me between the bricks to make a new foundation for a world where we will have more to say of a person on their last day than that she worked for her whole life and then she died."

[Sarah Key · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was not nearly as impressed as I thought I might be.

Regardless, Pratt's poem "Breakfast" remains to be one of my favorites.

Breakfast
by Minnie Bruce Pratt

Rush hour, and the short order cook lobs breakfast
sandwiches, silverfoil softballs, up and down the line.
We stand until someone says, Yes? The next person behind
breathes hungrily. The cashier's hands never stop. He shouts:
Where's my double double? We help. We eliminate all verbs.
The superfluous want, need, give they already know. Nothing's left
but stay or go, and a few things like bread. No one can stay long,
not even the stolid man in blue-hooded sweats, head down, eating,
his work boots powdered with cement dust like snow that never melts.

- Link: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16527