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Column 072

My Father Teaches Me to Dream

Intro by Ted Kooser
08.16.2006

Those who sur­vived the Great Depres­sion of the 1930s have a tough, no-non­sense take on what work is. If when I was young I’d told my father I was look­ing for ful­fill­ing work, he would have looked at me as if I’d just arrived from Mars. Here the Penn­syl­va­nia poet, Jan Beat­ty, takes on the voice of her father to illus­trate the think­ing of a gen­er­a­tion of Americans. 

My Father Teaches Me to Dream

You want to know what work is?
I’ll tell you what work is:
Work is work.
You get up. You get on the bus.
You don’t look from side to side.
You keep your eyes straight ahead.
That way nobody bothers you—see?
You get off the bus. You work all day.
You get back on the bus at night. Same thing.
You go to sleep. You get up.
You do the same thing again.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
There’s no handouts in this life.
All this other stuff you’re looking for—
it ain’t there.
Work is work.

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. First printed in “Witness,” Volume 10, Number 2, and reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright © 1996 by Jan Beatty, whose latest book, Boneshaker, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2002. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.