Posts tagged john cabbage
Sad Men
What Writers Can Learn from the Great Depression
John Cabbage, the Garbageman Poet
All weekend, I was reading John Cabbage, the garbageman poet. He made headlines during the Great Depression for writing verse while steering a garbage scow for the NYC Department of Sanitation. I found a copy of his 1938 collection, Time & Tides.
He was a member of the Raven Poetry Circle, and wore a white-brimmed hat and smiled for the camera in their photos. In a poem, he once compared his work to “He shampoos and manicures the City’s streets / For he is the Barber of the Streets.”
Below, I’ve copied down lines from “My Children,” a short poem about economic inequality and memory. He ends by writing a spooky few lines about us, his future readers…
