Teacher/Pizza Guy (Made in Michigan Writer Series)

Teacher/Pizza Guy (Made in Michigan Writer Series)

Teacher/Pizza Guy is a collection of autobiographical poems from the 2016–17 school year in which Jeff Kass worked as a full-time English teacher and a part-time director for a literary arts organization and still had to supplement his income by delivering pizzas a few nights a week. In the collection, Kass is unapologetically political without distracting from the poems themselves but rather adds layers and nuances to the fight for the middle class and for educators as a profession. The timing of this book is beyond relevant. As a public high school teacher in America, Kass's situation is not uncommon. In September 2018, Time published an article detailing how many public school teachers across the country and in a variety of environments work multiple jobs to help make ends meet. Teacher/Pizza Guy chronicles Kass's experience of teaching, directing, feeding people, and treading the delicate balance of holding himself accountable to his wife and kids, his students, his customers, and his own mental and physical health while working three jobs in contemporary America. The journey of that year was draining, at times daunting, at times satisfying, but always surprising. Many of the ideas for these poems were initially scribbled onto the backs of pizza receipts or scratched out during precious free moments amidst the chaos of the school day. A driving force behind the book is Philip Levine's poem "What Work Is," which Kass believes attempts to examine not only the dignity and complexity of what we think physical, tangible work is but also the exhausting, albeit sometimes fulfilling nature of emotional work. Teacher/Pizza Guy is a funny and relatable collection for readers, thinkers, educators, and pizza lovers everywhere. "Like so many others in America's working class, poet and teacher Kass had to take on a second job mid-career to help make ends meet. Isn't it strange, he states bluntly "attempting something new at fifty," the "new" in this case is delivering pizzas until 2 a.m. on a weekday. Later in the collection Kass mentions, in passing, that he'll return home to try to get a little bit of sleep, only to awake in time to do it all over again. These poems ring with compassion and empathy, touching on the all-too-human foibles Kass encounters each day and night in classrooms and during his pizza deliveries, from college professors who tip $5 on a $97 tab to an elegiac poem, "Young man, take your headphones out", about a student who bravely endures more pain than someone his age should have to. As John Lennon once sang, "a working class hero is something to be." This collection is the work of a hero and a first-rate poet."―Raúl Niño, Booklist "[The poem] "Garbage Day" . . . made me feel the frustration and joy depicted."―Governor Gretchen Whitmer "Within the drudgery of going from job to job, Kass is not all work; he observes and shows parallels between his jobs and life, recognizing and taking ownership of those moments rather than letting work consume him, almost as if he is both living his life and watching it from the outside. Kass finds meaning in those fleeting moments of entering and exiting customers' lives to bring them pizza and also seeks respect as he makes ends meet."―Martha Stuit, Pulp Arts Around Ann Arbor "I never really cared for poetry, but I truly loved Kass's work. He speaks to all of our insecurities and vulnerabilities, giving a voice to what we want to say but rarely do. Yes, teachers are struggling to get by financially, and it's a shame that education is not being made a higher priority in our society. Thank you, Jeff, for opening the door to this conversation in a creative and enriching way."―David Hecker, president of AFT Michigan "After twenty-plus years of teaching, I can say that these poems capture more of a teacher's life than any news story, assigned manual, or documentary account ever could. To read them is to experience the inspiring, infuriating, hilarious, tedious, and quietly glorious lives lived by one teacher residing in the twenty-first century as a fully realized and flawed human being. They will speak to your heart and mind regardless of which side of the big desk you've ever been on."―Sean Sabo, teacher, Ann Arbor, Michigan "Here we have poems of labor, wages, busted knees, and the miracles of bodies at all. Forged out of economic precarity and the ways that such uncertainty shapes a life (its breaths, hours, delights, resistance), Kass's poems strain toward what is broken, depleted, or overlooked, and find song there. These are not songs of repair, but songs that praise and document some of the effortful lasting, and attempts to last, of Kass's most beloved subjects. In this way these poems carry the intimacy and goodbye of an elegy, the attentiveness of the ode, and the urgency of the protest cry."―Aracelis Girmay, Author of the Black Maria "Jeff Kass affirms the dignity and heartbreak of the working person with funny and deeply human tu