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Mark Nowak

Join us in celebrating the release of Mark Nowak

's Shut Up Shut Down Coffee House Press. Nowak is the author of the critically acclaimed debut book of poems Revenants, the editor of Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics, and the co-editor of Visit Teepee Town: Native Writings After the Detours. He has received two Jerome Foundation grants and a McKnight Foundation grant for his journal, Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics, as well as a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. He grew up in Buffalo, New York and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he teaches at the College of St. Catherine and is active in the labor movement.

"The several long poems that make up this book build into each other with devastating force and understatement, breaking poetic boundaries, regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature. Nowak is a highly gifted and conscious artist, carrying, like the oldest bards, a group narrative which must be told if his listeners are to understand who they are and on what their lives depend—and this, in our time, means all of us."

—Adrienne Rich

16

from "Capitalization"

Mark Nowak

Former controllers are driving cabs
in Lansing, Mich., selling bathroom fixtures
in Long Beach, Calif., hanging wallpaper
in Atlanta, pipefitting in Drexel Hill, Pa.,
baking in Honolulu, roughnecking
in the oilfields of Oklahoma,
substitute teaching in Hot Springs, Ark.,
selling cars in Detroit
and underwriting life insurance in Baltimore.
When I peddled eggs in East Pittsburgh,
I'd meet up with many people
who worked at Westinghouse.
They greeted me like an old and trusted friend.
They'd say, "Margaret, if you tell us
those eggs are fresh, we know they're fresh."
I thought: It's good to have
that kind of reputation. It's good
to be able to look people in the face,
to shake a worker's hand
with no need to apologize.
Capitalize both parts of a hyphenated word
if each part is ordinarily capitalized:
Anglo-American attitude
Scotch-Irish ancestry
anti-American

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