A weekly poem
The Poetry of Work
Public-domain poems on work, craft, and vocation. A quiet pause in the working day.
People have long turned to poetry to make sense of their working lives, the hard parts and the good. This is a small weekly gathering of those poems, drawn entirely from the public domain: voices from across the centuries on labor and craft, the sea and the land, vocation and rest.
Work keeps changing, and quickly. Sitting for a moment with how earlier generations wrote about it is one way to keep the human part of it close. Each week brings one poem, paired with a public-domain photograph, posted across Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
The project is curated by Oliver S. Crocco, a professor of leadership and human resource development, with care taken to get the sources and the public-domain status right.
This week
Walt Whitman, “Song of the Broad-Axe”
Sources
Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892), "Song of the Broad-Axe" (1856). Public domain. Source: Project Gutenberg, Leaves of Grass (eBook #1322).
Photograph: a ship-carpenter's workshop, Altonaer Museum, Hamburg. Christoph Braun (CC0).
Archive
Past poems
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Kahlil Gibran, “On Work (from The Prophet)”
Kahlil Gibran (1883 to 1931), "On Work" (1923). Public domain. Source: Project Gutenberg (The Prophet, eBook #58585, Kahlil Gibran).
Photograph: a woman at a spinning wheel, Sogn og Fjordane, Norway, early 1900s. Fylkesarkivet i Sogn og Fjordane. Public domain.