Bespoke - Jan 11 2021

 

Bespoke

Jan 11 2021

A cordwainer makes shoes

a cobbler repairs them.

As if anyone rescues a damaged pair of shoes

instead of buying new ones.

Obsolescence rules.

Just as the division of labour

has rendered makers obsolete.

Instead, each worker is a cog in the machine

bending to the singular task

of backstay, counter, eyelet, gore

heel, insole, outstrap,

toe cap, top lift, saddle, throat

welt, medallion, plain-toe.

And even more hourly earners

at work on the vamp, monk strap, outsole.

Or a single machine

extruding plastic

and turning out a sleek seamless beauty.

Humble footwear

that serves its purpose.

While the forgotten craft

like all the other lost arts

is as archaic as the word.

One I encountered today

and will never have need of again.

Because the cordwainers and cobblers

have become as disposable

as an old pair of shoes

that aren't worth fixing.

And work

that might once have been virtuous, meaningful, Godly

is now merely cheap;

a world of plenty,

with so many inexpensive goods

we can no longer discern

desire from need.

This poem was inspired by Jill Lepore's piece in today's New Yorker (Jan 11, 2021): What's Wrong With the Way We Work (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/whats-wrong-with-the-way-we-work_).

She deals with serious subjects like the gig economy and gruelling shift work, increasing inequality, the decline of unions, domestic labour and the discounting of women's work, the myth of “meaningful” work, the decline of craft and competence, and the epidemic of over-work. And, as happens more frequently in the New Yorker than anything else I regularly read, she stumped me with a new word.

In an industrial society, where hyper-specialization and the division of labour rule, we are all helpless. I think me more than most, because I am utterly incapable of doing anything with my hands. I realize that there is a lot of romanticization in my lament for a lost world of self-sufficiency and near subsistence. Still, there has always been satisfaction in creating something out of whole cloth, even if it was by necessity.

Aside from the virtue of craft and the lost art of the maker, abundance may have made us less happy, not more. And obsolescence, on which a consumption based economy depends, is not merely wasteful, it has a strong moral dimension to it.

The Puritans thought we needed to be productive to be Godly. But to flourish as human beings, we need time for leisure, creativity, wandering minds. Poetry, for example, is hardly productive. There is no place for it in the venerated GNP. But at least it's more meaningful than an assembly line!

I really enjoy the celebration of language that can be found in specialized terms and found sounds. So as soon as I started thinking about making a shoe from scratch, I started to imagine the possibilities in its technical nomenclature. I Googled, immediately found 17 words, and thought a list was not only a great way to play with their music, but to impress on the reader the complexity and craftsmanship that can go into this simple-seeming everyday object. It's always fun to play with language this way. And a nice addition to a poem that began with a fascination about a word.