Pioneering: Poems from the Construction Site

To say that Susan Eisenberg has an unusual CV is something of an understatement: a poet, activist, teacher, and master electrician, Eisenberg has worked in the male-dominated field of construction for some 20 years. She's also published essays and criticism in magazines like The Nation and Utne Reader, created an interactive multimedia installation, and written We'll Call You If We Need You, a nonfiction book about women in construction. Published concurrently with We'll Call You, this gritty, plainspoken book of poems--her first--draws on Eisenberg's diverse experiences on the gender barricades. The poems speak with a voice that is by turns dangerous and exhilarating, rich with metaphors and unrelentingly physical--much like construction work itself. On discovering a dead rat on a job site, for instance, a male coworker hustles away the body while the poet remains behind, matter-of-factly beating maggots with a two-by-four: "I thanked / John and / bought his coffee. / I was foreman. The rat / by rights was mine." This is bleak, honest, hard-hitting stuff, powered as much by political consciousness as by the conventions of the genre.