Steel Mills then and now. The Steel City into the Tree City. Rails Rivers Roads Ravines. Confluence of Hope and Mill Acid. Steel Ward / Psych Mill
Carrie Furnace, six blast furnaces, circa 1970's when I worked there. Carrie Furnace today. # 6 # 7 blast furnaces plus ore bridge
"This saurian metal beast is the body we inhabit." "Carrie Furnace," Last "They tower by the river, / iron and brick beakers, / rust-brown as lava
Heat, p. 46 rocks, / silent, hollow . . ." "Number 6 and 7 Furnaces" Last Heat, p.
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"This saurian metal beast is the body we inhabit." "Carrie Furnace," Last "They tower by the river, / iron and brick beakers, / rust-brown as lava
Heat, p. 46 rocks, / silent, hollow . . ." "Number 6 and 7 Furnaces" Last Heat, p.
10
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Mary Immaculate Hall, Site of St. Francis Psychiatric Ward, 1970's: "two wings of burnt brick, its medieval / spire a dark candle flame. / I have seared my mind in its heat: / belted men to a steel bed / in the seclusion room, walked them / out of electroshock, clinging / to my arm. I've listened to their stories . . . " "Driving to Work," The Divine Salt, p. 5
"St. Francis Hospital / looms above Bloomfield / . . . / The patients have their own names for it: / Saint Frig-it-all, Hell on Pills, / Crazy Eight, Edge City, The Tomb." "Driving to Work" The Divine Salt, p. 5
"She jumped this time, vaulting / over the railing from the high cement / of the Bloomfield Bridge, down / to railroad tracks and scrubby trees." "Donna Lee Polito," The Divine Salt, p. 7.
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This is where I taught in the Peace Corps (Ubol Teachers' College back then, late 1970's). Many poems in Farang take place here.
"Sonjay writes and English paper / about sleeping in the night house / with his "big father," 87 years old, / who speaks Folktale with the phonetics / of ghosts, puffs of air, mysterious / fricatives. . . . How can I grade its agreement / or tense?" (from "the Night House," pp. 17-18 in Farang)