In Filthy Labors, Lauren Schmidt draws on personal observations from her position as a poetry teacher at a shelter for homeless mothers, as well as her own roles as daughter and sister through times of family turmoil. She condemns the indignities suffered by the poor and the powerless and praises the work of those who do the caretaking. Here is poetry in the great tradition of social justice literature going back to Walt Whitman. Organized around the Catholic Sacraments, these poems call upon Whitman directly, for his words replace the liturgical text of these rituals to rejoice in the redemptive power of poetry in the absence of religion’s saving grace.
