The Lower Forty-Eight is a series of poems. Jason Baldinger once made the whole van drive around the city a second time to tell a story in the car. It was about these kids who hosted Jason and co. who were clueless. They were my age and they bought him coffees from starbucks in their backpacks, and warmed them up in the oven, because they didn't have a coffee maker.
Jason writes about not having health care. He writes about coming into a record collection and living off the proceeds for a year. My professor said "I don't know what you're going to find out there in Pittsburgh, Peter, there's a few Labor Poets, but that's about it."
Basically, I show up to Jason's readings, and there's a few flavors: 1/2 bad, 1/4 middling, 1/4 good. The good one is a guy expressing legitimate tragedy. It's sort of the David Newman flavor. I assume Newman lead the charge. I assume there's some history.
What David Newman does write is the essential panic of Pittsburgh. Alcoholics combined with bad employers. You know, I'm pretty sheltered. But if you're about one rung down from where I am there's a certain panic, I know my peers feel it... It's all these yinzers who are still used to paying employees nada and then drinking with them later. There's a lot of bars here but they're all $3.50 a beer??
Pittsburgh has a series of speakeasies you have to apply to get into... My one friend said like "yeah, I got molested there". It's not a good or basically decent thing that these Pittsburghers are drawing on, the you know working-class shit... at least, nostalgia guarantees very little...
