Work Songs by Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan Cohen‘s Work Songs is a celebration of youthful naiveté-a collision of hope and difficult realities that manages to find joy despite surly customers, interminable hours, and the “uncertain crossing” that separates the empire of childhood from the adult world. In language both direct and tender, the poet recounts the disparate jobs he took in his younger days-disc jockey, cab driver, concession worker, butcher-all of which culminate in an astute summation of a lesson most of us learn too late, “We saved no money, earned the wealth of kings in each other.”
–Frank Paino, author of Obscura and Pietà

Work Songs struck me first with its sense of abundance. With excess of ordinary objects made strange, colors, sounds, language familiar and new, the little book offers a joyful and affirmative view of a broken world-a view happy to juke-box dance in the tension between Cohen’s two earned axioms: “Work is death,” and “play is work.”
–Josh Roark, founder and director, PocketMFA Program, and author, Put One Hand Up, Lean Back

Jonathan Cohen brings a keen eye and an open heart to the proceedings of his many service jobs. “Furls of spun sugar,” he writes in “Zoo Concession Wise Guy,” “wobble on paper cones.” In “Elephant House Rapture,” he recreates the tumble of imagery around the “kiosk red and / narrow as a London phone booth.” Cohen deploys a lexicon that includes the common-“fares don’t want to talk”-and the arcane-“tires spin in late winter mank,” he writes, repurposing a little-used British slang word to brilliant effect. So it’s no surprise when we hit a title like “Disc Jockey Agonistes.” Although the influences might be closer-Philip Levine, Richard Hugo, Dick Allen-there’s more than a touch of Walt Whitman’s generosity of spirit here; the wise guy is revealed as tender-hearted celebrant. “Big winds feel like history swaying on its hinge,” he writes. “Quiet winds toll our wins and losses.” We are, it seems, all in this together. This small book of poems is as rich and vibrant and varied as life itself.
–Jon Davis, author of Above the Bejeweled City and Fearless Now & Nameless