Anna and the Steel Mill

This collection of poems is the winner of the 1995 first-book competition in the Texas Tech University Press Poetry Award series.These poems about a young woman leaving Italy for the United States in the 1950s examine both the small town and urban landscape of a uniquely American experience."Anna and the Steel Mill is a work of great range and maturity. These poems are struck like matches—out of the small frictions in these poems arise gentle flames, but also raging fires."—Jim DanielsSpare ChangeCrossing Spruce Street, I was bending like a peddlerunder my laundry and three loaves of day-old-breadShe held her sleeping daughter, asked for change for milk,and diapers to soak up what the baby couldn't use.I'd spent my change on laundry tokens, flat imitationsrattling in my hand. I offered bread; she needed cash;we stared at the broken street, as if we hoped to seea table spread with laundered white, with knives and basketsready for the strong bread that, broken openwould release a blessing in the smell of yeast.