Shirt Comments

Wear a t-shirt that says " My Parents Went To and all I Got Was This T-Shirt From a Sweat Shop! " Actually, great poem and I enjoyed all the specifications and itemizations; I do think clothes are a worthy thing to write poetry about and you do so with painstaking rhythm and poetry well indemnified to the grueling enslavement of tedious work. Nice- I like poems about clothes.

The Witness! ! With the muse of life. Thanks for sharing this poem with us.

A good example of a poem on, a meditation on, an object. pinsky takes us on an interesting journey beginning and ending with, simply, a shirt. -GK

Brilliant and heart touching!

Such a brilliant write by Robert Pinsky👍👍👍

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven. One hundred and forty-six died in the flames On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes- this stanza i liked most in this poem...... thinking of the sorrow of the past and remembering the dead....... tony

Awesome and intestreting. Thanks for sharing.

well-researched and well-expressed

This poem seems somber and dark because it is. The author brilliantly contrasts the details of an everyday item with the inhumanity engaged to bring such an item into our closets. This work is a rife condemnation of the exploitation of the sweat-shop employees whose lives are exsanguinated for our opportunity to enjoy the gloss of a bone-simulated button and a stiff collar. Powerful socio-political commentary, and I must agree, Lantz, that it is a grave misfortune that such a message be mis-perceived as a homily to the qualities of a shirt.

Do any of the commenters on this site realize the political content of this poem? I'm heartened that some are moved by the aesthetics of it, but the aesthetics are informed by the sad historical facts, facts that remain contemporary in different product manufacturing. The Triangle Shirt fire was a catastrophic event at a sweat shop in New York City. It was the impetus for new laws and regulations protecting workers. Protections that are not that old, but that do not extend to the countries where products are still made for consumption in America. Where workers are subject to slave labor and dangerous working conditions. The poem speaks to event that changed labor and safety laws in America but did not change the conditions for the people who produce those products for American consumers today who live and work under other flags today. Their are altogether too many people on this site reading poems that don't have a fukking clue what they're commenting on. That kind of illiteracy disgusts me.

After reading this poem I think I will appreciate the efforts of the seamstress and tailors much more..The young man who saved those ladies is a hero..

This is wonderful poetry. Enjoyed thoroughly. Thanks for sharing and Congrats.

This is incredibly original. How a piece of our daily apparel attained its global status. Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Makes me read again and again for several times....the shirt, its history, the environment...all awesome awesome.. a brilliant theme, very unusual, interestingly written....superb

a brilliant historical poem of the making of a shirt and the struggles that people encounter in it's manufacture.

Nice poem... thanks for sharing.....

The yoke! ! Thanks for sharing this poem with us.

Amazing.........never knew one could write like this, u inspire!

Brilliant, the way he shuttles between the shirt and all that surrounds it. I love this poem, even though it seems very somber and dark.