This was just ok. I wasn't impressed with it. I suppose I might recommend it to a student. I didn't personally enjoy it and probably wouldn't recommend it to an adult.

Filthy Labors: Poems by Lauren Marie Schmidt is her fourth collection of poetry. Her work has appeared in journals such as North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, Nimrod, Painted Bride Quarterly, PANK, New York Quarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, The Progressive, and others. Her awards include the So to Speak Poetry Prize, the Neil Postman Prize for Metaphor, The Janet B. McCabe Prize for Poetry, and the Bellevue Literary Review’s Vilcek Prize for Poetry.

Filthy Labors centers around the work that many in society chose not to see. Schmidt spends a good deal of time describing her work at Haven House for Homeless Women and Children and her experience there. In “How We Go” a woman’s babyfather “passed away.” Passed away is how she describes the death to her child. It is so much easier to say that than describe the violent death and bloody crime scene. It is a gritty world where she works. When asked if the poet was ever pregnant, she responds she has never had a child; that’s not the question.

In “Unto Others” Schmidt quotes Mitt Romney’s 47% speech and counters it with Matthew 7:12 and Julius Caesar, act 3, scene 2 and continues with her own words. Each phrase is followed by Shakespeare’s “If any, speak.” Schmidt names the sections after the Catholic sacraments. Baptism, Penance, Holy Orders (three times), Anointing of the Sick, Confirmation, and Communion. All the poems are autobiographical or biographical dealing with family members and either an eccentric grandfather or a very progressive family. There is a little humor (or embarrassment) in her life.

The introduction to the poems are provided by writers like Whitman, August Wilson, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Whitman is the key to her inspiration. Although naming sections after sacraments Schmidt shows that her religion, savior, is poetry. Her words and actions run much deeper than many people's religion.

Filthy labors, as are those who certainly have made, and will make the women guest of a shelter for lonely women and children in which she worked as a teacher of creative writing. There is her experience in these poems that sometimes border on prose, while maintaining the literary tension of the poem, there are the voices of women, their questions, their initial incomprehension (why should I care about poetry when I have so many complications in life to think about?) and eventually the joy of having found a sounding board for their entry, and a new solidarity. Magnificent book, which extends the boundaries of poetry, or rather, call it back to its social function, its pure and crystal clear language, therefore unequivocal, to express discomfort and social demands.
Thank Northwestern University Press and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.