Edward Hirsch didn't always write poetry for a living. He's been a busboy, a railroad brakeman, a garbage man; he's worked in a chemical plant and in a box factory. 'You never forget,' he once told an interviewer, 'what it means to punch a clock.' Perhaps for that reason, he's written frequently about labor: the quiet dignity of getting something done, the sense of purpose that pulls many of us out of bed each morning, the way that even straightforward little tasks can structure one's days'one's life. Work is strangely absent from much of contemporary poetry, he said in 2018, despite the fact that 'most people's lives are consumed by their jobs.' His corpus is something of a corrective. In 'The Custodian,' a synagogue's janitor performs his humble duties: dusting off scrolls, folding tallises, turning out the lights. The chores are mundane, but he does them respectfully and thoroughly'and in that sense he contributes to the congregants' sacred experience. A shomer'a keeper or...
learn more
