The Art of the Lathe

by B.H. Fairchild

B.H. Fairchild’s The Art of the Lathe is a collection of poems centering on the working-class world of the Midwest, the isolations of small-town life, and the possibilities and occasions of beauty and grace among the machine shops and oil fields of rural Kansas.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

B. H. Fairchild, the author of several acclaimed poetry collections, has been a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the William Carlos Williams Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Claremont, California.

Reviews

[Dan]

The Art of the Lathe by B.H. Fairchild

This collection of twenty-nine poems was first published in 1998.

I had the good fortune of reading Fairchild’s 2003 award winning book called Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest. Having read both, I like this earlier work better. There are a half dozen poems that especially resonated with me. Although I’m not from Kansas like Fairchild, I did grow up on a one-hundred acre farm in Michigan. So the rural imagery and a few coming of age poems were familiar and comforting.

Here are my favorite poems in the collection.

1. Airlifting Horses - a horse is airlifted out of a fire engulfed area.

2. A Model of Downtown Los Angeles, 1940 - a father takes his daughter on a field trip to the museum where they stop at a diorama of the city. A perfect blend of the past and modern day beginning with the introduction of jacarandas to LA and ending with the Rodney King beating. A wonderfully crafted poem.

3. Little Boy - a young boy asks his father - who fought in Okinawa just a few years earlier - why did we drop the bombs on those two towns in Japan? A well crafted and insightful poem.

4. Two photographs - a son reflects on a photograph of his young father standing with his Packard and on a photograph of himself in front of his car. And then he conveys his thoughts as he drives away from the small town forever. Excellent use of imagery right down to the photographs. My favorite poem.

5. Old Men Playing Basketball - nostalgic poem asking questions like whether these old men make love to their wives.

6. The Art of the Lathe - the title poem deftly combines disparate imagery of a metalworker apprentice working in the shop with history. Leonardo da Vinci, bickering sparrows, Patsy Cline, Mozart and Brunelleschi’s Dome in Florence are mentioned.

I wish a few more of Fairchild’s poems used strict meter. As it stands many read like straight up prose. The imagery shines through nonetheless.

4.5 stars

[Alyson Hagy]

I might give this book five stars just on the basis of the poems "Beauty" and "Body and Soul." The first is a stunning hymn to the American resistance to beauty (that soft and useless presence in the world). The second is one of the greatest poems to use a sport (baseball) as its platform--though of course it's about far more than that. The book is filled with vivid physical imagery that is never over-wrought. And the poems strike deep, or they do with me. The language of work. The language of men. The language of poverty and striving. The sense of wonder (always wonder) amidst despair. An American poetry classic.

[Amelia Orr]

I don’t normally do review reviews but, despite its brevity, this so so so deserved one. So! I picked this book up second-hand and before that I’d never read anything by B.H. Fairchild, and yet this has immediately earned its place as one of my personal favorite poetry collections. I cannot even begin to express the breadth of feelings I experienced in the only 70-something pages of The Art of the Lathe. Fairchild is a master of both imagery and emotion, and employs them in the most unexpectedly gut-wrenching ways. He has one of the most intense abilities I’ve encountered to create such overwhelming yet soothing scenes that come crashing in on you by the end of each poem in a way that feels genuinely natural. His use of contrasting motifs is incredibly seamless and instinctive. Throughout the collection he juxtaposes manual labor with academia, fine arts with sports, the fervor of youth with the acceptance of aging, the bustling of Los Angeles with the silence of rural Kansas, traditional Christian imagery with references to socialist texts, the excitement of urban development with the disintegration of small town life, and the mundane with the extraordinary: actively blurring the lines that divide the two, merging them, transforming them. Even the title makes this apparent. If you have even the slightest interest in poetry, you will be stunned by The Art of the Lathe. Read ASAP! I know for certain I will be reading this over again and again.

[Paul]

B. H. Fairchild's The Art of the Lathe: allusive, beautiful, clear, elegant, precise, subtle, versatile, and workmanlike poems. A must re-read.

[Tracy]

I read these poems in small chunks. A friend lent the book to me, I have been taking care of how I think about the poems. They are beautiful vignettes of working life, a blue collar life that is nearly gone, but has not been replaced by a comparable industry. These poems were special when the book came out, now the anxiety shakes rusted steel harder.

Stephanie Barber's collection of fictional vignettes, ALL THE PEOPLE, has a similar feel - capturing portraits that don't deserve to be in a museum because they are still living, but they are lost.

"When frost first enters the air
in the country of moon and stars,
the world has glass edges, and the hard glint
of crystals seeping over iron
makes even the abandoned tractor seem all night sky and starlight."
-from "Speaking the Names"

[Sonja]

The first poem “Beauty” is incredibly great, as are many of the poems in Art of the Lathe by BH Fairchild. Writing from the point of view of a machinist in many poems, he marries the machines to the sublime. I love how he moves through narratives like in “Airlifting Horses” and “Cigarettes” from the ordinary to the unexpected. The juxtapositions are so good and so inspiring. We see work and Scarlatti in the same poem, or the lathe against the backdrop of its Leonardo history. I didn’t know Da Vinci had something to do with the modern lathe.

I used to be a machinist, believe it or not, and I could so relate to these poems and the working class environment Fairchild creates. I used to memorize poems at the machines. I knew musicians who worked in these noisy, cold, brutal shops. The industrial age!

[Doug]

the best book of poetry I have read in 5 years. A very under appreciated talent. Form the great state of mid western poets and thinkers, Kansas. His layers start where Stafford's end.

[Spencer]

very enjoyable expansion of whitman’s love for the working class, especially loved the poem on cigarettes.
(thank u to amelia for allowing me to borrow this and for the recommendation! )

[Amanda Conover]

This book centers around what it’s like working in a lathe under intense conditions, and juxtaposes that work with the lives of individual people outside of work, relating the work they do to their non-working selves. It also touches on some very interesting experiences, such as airlifting a horse out of a dangerous fire-ridden area or a man welding his car on the side of the road.

The vast majority of poems in this collection are narrative-driven and can read like vignettes or prose. While I didn’t mind this, I do wish there was more variety within the collection. I felt as though some of the poems lacked enough poetic elements and rhythm.

Overall, it’s a wonderful collection and I am glad I got to read it for my book club.

[James]

Well done but somehow not as satisfying as "Arrival of the Future". But then who we are and what is going on in our lives when we read changes our interaction with any book. I felt an emptiness of connection rather than a fullness, and that missing something may have been in my life rather than in this book.

These elevated poems about the working class open with a truly amazing poem, "Beauty". Take a gander.

[c]

overly didactic by far and more than occasionally overwrought (don't know if you've heard but this book is about LATHES), i still liked this collection quite a bit. "Beauty," despite its title, is exactly that—really, a gunshot of a poem

[C. H.]

One of my the best books of poetry I've ever read. Gritty and real and beautiful.

[Robin]

Enjoyed this collection. Giving 5 stars especially for Speaking the Names, The Welder visited by the Angel of Mercy, Keats, and The Himalayas.

[Tom Collingridge]

Everyone who loves poetry should have a copy.

[Timothy]

Fine collection of poems of about blue-collar, working-class life. Beautiful observations, but sometimes his language distances itself from the subject.

[Blake Randolph]

Second time reading. Amazing both times

[Amorak Huey]

" ... nuzzling the facts but mauling the truth ..."

[The_J]

Just not particularly compelling - wordy dreck?

[Eric Marcy]

There are some excellent poems in Fairchild's focused work on the passing of time and mortality through the lens of the ordinary working man. The first large poem, "Beauty", is a masterwork in and of itself, highlighting the curious masculine fear of using the profound word. "Body and Soul" is another highlight, focusing on a baseball game played by a scattered group of aging adults who encounter a certain young boy with a remarkable talent, and Fairchild diverts attention from the child himself to what the interactions reveal about the aging process in men. Fascinating work, and though there are a few misses that don't leave an impression, the majority of poetry is good and the gems will stick with you.

[Oliver Ho]

Beautiful collection--I love the mature, searching voice in these poems, always looking back and reflecting, wondering what it all meant. The poems feel like literary short stories, full of working-class characters who experience moments of grace and beauty, and often don't recognize it, or feel puzzled or even overwhelmed by it. I also love the balance in almost every poem between "high" and "low" culture, mixing references to art and literature in with pop culture and machine-shop terminology, putting them all on an equal level.

[Tyson]

I saw B. H. Fairchild give a reading in Kansas City last year, and I immediately fell in love. I think this is his best volume of poems, although "Rave On" by itself makes _Early Occult Memory Systems_ pretty terrific, too. Start with "Body and Soul" and "Airlifting Horses."

[David Allen]

Working men, baseball, basketball, oil fields, machine shops, Kansas, B&W movies, small towns, Hopper paintings -- Fairchild writes what he knows and what he sees. I liked about half these poems, some of them quite a bit.

[Robert]

Magnificently crafted poems. More here: [http://www.robertpeake.com/archives/1...]

[Mike Rancourt]

Not fantastic craft (long, prosaic lines), but the emotion and imagery is wonderful.

[Al]

If it were possible to give more than 5 stars, this book certianly deserves it.

[Acolyte]

america without saying america. very knowing.

[Chris]

Another great collection by Fairchild, perhaps not quite as strong as "Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest," but still quite good. I particularly liked the long poem, "Beauty."

[Iris]

On Beauty is one of my favorite poems of all time. It makes buying the entire book worth it.

[Maryfrances]

This is a fabulous book--insightful, precise, elegant and gritty at the same time. The poem "Beauty" is worth the book alone. A masterpiece of a poem.

[Doug]

Fairchild's strongest work. It has two poems that remain in my top twenty list.