Fight Songs for the Underdogs

"For 21/2 years, I had the distinct honor of sharing a union steward desk with Dan. I had barely known him when we started, but I learned to love him like a brother.

Not in the union "brotherhood" sense, but in the ACTUAL brother sense. We fought about ideals and solutions to problems. We fought over the layout of our desk, and who got which drawers to file papers in. But we were on opposing shifts, so we only fought for a few short minutes before one of us had to go home and the other had to start his shift. Occasionally, I would find a scrap of paper with a few scribbled lines of a poem on it, lost under our shared keyboard or on the floor under our shared chair. And the realization of who Dan truly is and was would bowl me over again and again and again.

I have never met someone who has such an ability to make me feel so much through a poem. Not in the "emotional" sense, but the "cold, drizzly, grey morning, while crunching the fresh, but already dirty snow under my work boots" sense. The factory life ain't easy by any means. Dan has a seemingly never-ending list of ways to describe how much of a toll it takes on a person, mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Dan has a way of sticking the all-seeing eye of his needle like words straight into the closest open vein under a sore blue-collar neck, and paying homage to the grit under the fingernails, the grease on the arms, the blisters on heels, and the cuts on the back of hands that keep both the factory and working class turning. The mundane is shown as exactly that, but with glimmers of hope, purpose, pride, and strength. The drudgery & monotony is all for a reason, and a dignified paycheck, and that somehow makes it worth it. He makes me feel like I am not alone, in a way and a life that no one else I've ever read can."

-"Big" John Mohr - former UAW Chief Steward,

afternoon shift, JL Wrangler Assembly- current

supplier quality inspector on afternoon shift

"In his tradition of the poet-as-prophet and the worker-as-witness, this labor-loving poet stands at the confluence of sweat and stanza, where calloused hands and unflinching verse carve truth into the fabric of working-class life. Dan Denton's poetry does not romanticize the labor struggle-it lives it. Forged in union halls, picket lines, and long nights under fluorescent light. His voice rises not from theory but from practice: from organizing, from resisting, from refusing to let silence smother solidarity. Each line is a ledger of real lives, real costs, and hard-won dignity, echoing with the rhythm of machinery and the heartbeat of collective power. This is poetry that doesn't flinch, that refuses polish when grit is honest. With authenticity etched into every syllable, his poetry reminds us that the revolution is not only organized-

it is sung."

-Jody Russell, Proud UAW Member

In Fight Songs for the Underdogs, Dan Denton echoes the determined hope of the Midwest. From "Junkyard Heart" to "Big Green Electrical Box and East Rudy Dreams," he captures the essence of skirting poverty among rust and depression. There's a backbeat of determination in his love songs to unions, in his praise of working mothers and artists, in his wearing a city like his second skin. "Toledo/ a city so tough/ that it hums the blues/ but never cries them." This is a man who fights fire and hatred with words, who spreads truth like a slow tune that repeats in the back of your brain. "Let's paint/ a little flame/ right here" he beckons, and

we return to these poems as our tender sparks during dark times.

-Jonie McIntire, Poet Laureate of Lucas County, Ohio (2022-2025)