Inside the Money Machine

Inside the Money Machine is poetry for the "immense majority", for those who work for a living, out of the house or at home, from the laundromat to the classroom, from blue-collar construction sites to white-collar desk jobs. These fresh, gritty and passionate poems are about the people who survive and resist inside "the money machine" of 21st-century capitalism: those who've looked for work and not found it, who've held a job but wanted more out of life, who believe a better world is still possible. Inspired by the poetic prose of the Communist Manifesto, Inside the Money Machine draws its power from Pratt's own working life and grass-roots organizing, and the struggles of neighbors, co-workers, political activists and loved ones. Pratt writes from inside the failing money machine: "The problem is, the plan is not ours." In the tradition of the socially-engaged poetry of Muriel Rukeyser and Langston Hughes, Nazim Hikmet of Turkey and Pablo Neruda of Chile, these poems speak to the unfinished work of this moment in history, in a way that poetry seldom does. Inside the Money Machine urges: "Let us follow ourselves into a present not ruled by the past."