Little Steel

Sue D. Burton's Little Steel is a poem of praise and lament. It praises two steelworkers who took a stand during an infamous 1937 strike at Republic Steel in Burton's hometown, Massillon, Ohio. It laments the refusal of others to take a stand against injustice or violence, in the community, in the family. The poem is the story of Massillon itself, once a thriving "company town," now -- in the aftermath of the mill's closing -- struggling to rejuvenate itself. It weaves the poet's voice (sometimes passionate, sometimes ironic or edgy) with testimony from a number of sources: newspapers, oral history interviews, imagined interviews (St. Dymphna, Patroness of Sleepwalkers, whose national shrine is at the Massillon State Hospital).