Narrative poems about the challenges and humor found in today's working world. Oh, and Elvis makes a cameo appearance.
If the Smithsonian Institution and Disneyland were to have a baby, then Jupiter Works on Commission by Jack Phillips Lowe would be it. With both funny poems and serious, thought-provoking poems, it’s chock-full of enough head-scratchers to impress your college philosophy professor, and enough knee-slappers to make you forget your kid’s tuition bill. You can have everything…at least in poetry. And you can order it from amazon!
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Professional Reviews
Jack Lowe's poetry gives voice to the often ignored modern worker ...
Chicagoan Jack Lowe's poetry collection, Jupiter Works on Commission, is a witty and buoyant read in a time where literary arts have largely been replaced with unimaginative social feeds. His subject, work, is reminiscent of the creative and political era of Beauvoir and Sartre's Les Temps Modernes. Poems such as The Breadman, Meticulous Care, or Cheer up Subversive Jean would have resonated alongside their reporting and columns. His storytelling brings characters like Lou D'Amato (a salesman who made a deal with the reaper), Tomas and Vinny (two guys chronically unemployed who desperately seek out a Roman God for financial help) to life in rich and brief prose. His narrative is clean, unfussy, and crisp ... Much like Hemingway's Nick stories. Lowe's frank and playful observations of the new work environments, low level management, and worker frustrations are documented in Snapped, Multiple Ironies, and Survivor Stripes. This collection should be required reading in business and HR courses. As a frustrated worker myself who has seen both business and government ignore the Occupy Movement and the general plight of the American people this collection made me laugh, relate, cry, and pray.
Davina Rhine
Book Review by Gail Galvan
ack Philips Lowe is an easy-to-read, narrative poet with a knack for details and a penchant for writing about the working class. He’s also a talented storyteller. His collection of twenty-four poems delivers delightful insights on topics as varied as a workplace breakroom, a boardroom, and the troubled minds of the unemployed. Lowe's narration lets the reader feel as if he/she is walking in the shoes of the workers he describes.
The cover graphic of a blue-collar worker sitting on a scaffold introduces us to the subject matter: the working class. I love the titles, themes, and punchlines throughout. Lowe delivers stories about everyday people living their hardworking lives. We see their honor, we hear their complaints, and we enjoy their humor.
In The Breadman, for instance, Calvin brings loaves of bread from his church’s soup kitchen to work to share with his colleagues. His co-workers just snicker at the thought until one day their company enacts payroll cuts. Suddenly, the laughing stops and the bread goes home with others instead of being thrown in the trash.
The other poems tell stories, too. Snapped deals with the endless questions on a job application form. Crash Course studies a worker who is succumbing to sneezing and flu-like symptoms. Survivor’s Stripes refers to older applicants pondering whether to wear the gray hair they have earned by surviving or to cover the gray before the job interview. Open Availability is about part-time workers who must be available at all hours, so they cannot have other jobs or additional income. The Night Hoss Kiboshed the King tells of a night in 1969 when the TV show Bonanza trumped a chance to see Elvis in person because Dad wanted to see the episode when Hoss meets a leprechaun.
My favorite in this collection is Coo-Coo-Cachew. It’s about a man named Buchman who handles customer complaints at a department store. To deal with rude customers, Buchman invents backstories for the complainers based on their looks and demeanor. He decides one guy looks like Benjamin Braddock, the character Dustin Hoffman plays in the movie, The Graduate. When the customer demands Buchman's name, he refuses to give it, saying, “I never liked what you did to Mrs. Robinson.” Lowe's wry humor surfaces again in the title work, Jupiter Works on Commission. In this scenario, two laid off welders get frustrated when their prayers to St. Jude for jobs go unanswered. They decide to pray to the Roman god Jupiter instead and must decide upon a suitable sacrifice because Jupiter never worked for free. Over and over, Lowe examines the lives and thoughts of everyday workers with humor and profound insight.
My single regret is that there aren't more poems in this collection. It’s that good.
Selected poems from previous & forthcoming collections together with Q&R apps on each page to enable audio rendition simultaneously with the written text
