Abstract

Abstract:

"Paradise" is a poem which moves from a dying man dreaming of his new scientific lab to the working conditions Marie and Pierre Curie labored under when they discovered the elements polonium and radium in 1898. It celebrates the scientific process, and also the joy of deep, purposeful work.

Abstract:

"Work: 1923" is a poem in the voice of a Radium Girl, one of the hundreds of young women who were hired after WWI to work in factories painting watch faces with luminescent paint. The women would get this paint, which was created with radium, on their skin and in their mouths, in part by accident, in part in fun, and in part due to the work practices established by their managers who taught the women to press their brushtips between their lips to

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