Description

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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.

About the Author

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Minnie Bruce Pratt published her first book of poetry in 1981 as part of the Women in Print movement in North Carolina. Her second book, Crime Against Nature, received the Lamont Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her ten books also include S/HE, about gender boundary crossing, Walking Back Up Depot Street, and The Dirt She Ate, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. In addition, she has received numerous other awards, including the Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammet award from the Fund for Free Expression, the Larry Levis Poetry Award from Prairie Schooner, a ForeWord (Independent Bookstores and Booksellers Magazine) Best Gay/Lesbian Book of the Year Award, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her work has been reviewed widely including in the New York Times and Publisher's Weekly. Pratt has a received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a fellowship in poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the arts. Born in Alabama, she now lives and works in Syracuse, New York.

Praise For…

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“AN UTTERLY RIVETING BOOK OF POEMS and a necessary book to read. Pratt’s scrutiny is constantly keen and inviting, and shifts deftly and humanely between reportage and lyricism. I realize these poems are all true. Pratt’s imagination is true.” —MICHAEL BURKARD



“MINNIE BRUCE PRATT SO COMPELLINGLY IDENTIFIES the tough times Inside the Money Machine. This book of poems is also hope, guiding us toward dignity, self-respect and clarity.” —RIGOBERTO GONZÁLES



“THIS IS GRITTY NEW WORK by one of North America’s best poets. Each poem reveals the sweat and labor of the many who are trying to get by in this tough, new world where big corporations and Wall Street are sucking all of our humanity dry. These poems are the voices of our-selves crying out.” —M.L. LIEBLER, poet and editor of Working Words: Punching the Clock & Kicking Out the Jams



“MINNIE BRUCE PRATT PEELS AWAY AT CAPITALISM, ‘the money machine,’ which is also the war machine. Inside the Money Machine is stunning anti-capitalist poetics in action.” —DON MEE CHOI, author of The Morning News Is Exciting