Another reason we need the poets

 About Stephen Dunn: I don’t know of a poet who wrote better about poisonous work. He wrote about pointless jobs, bad jobs and bad attitudes toward good jobs. In “Checklist,” he wrote of work

that takes from the body

and does not give back.

He wrote of work that “drops the body off at the liquor cabinet.”

Maybe you’ve had a job like that.

People complain about their jobs. If you want to improve the literary quality of those complaints, consult Dunn. He’s tops.

• Source: Stephen Dunn, Different Hours; New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010, p. 88.