Coal
A motif commonly found throughout the poems is, obviously, coal. The entire premise of these poems is the coal wars that took place from 1920 - 1921 and the fight of coal workers for additional rights, so it seems obvious that coal will be a recurring motif in the poems. The coal represents the horrors and the darker aspects of the coal mining operations that are taking place. Coal is usually directed to some of the sadder events in the novel. Coal can be found at all of the accidents that occurr in the coal mine, an example of which is the explosion that took place in the first poem. Chunks of coal were flying everywhere and the men who were killed by the explosion were covered in it. Another example of coal being a motif representative of sad events was when an Italian immigrant got stuck in a cave full of coal because it caved in. When they broke apart the coal and dragged him out, his body was so blackened they could barely spot him from the coal itself.
Pickaxe
The pickaxe is a popular symbol in the book. Most of the workers in the coal mines, at least in West Virginia, use pickaxes to get out chunks of coal in the mine shafts. This symbol represents the hard, arduous work that goes behind coal-mining. A clear example of this symbol can be seen in the poem about Papa and his family, an Italian immigrant who was an excellent stone sculptor in his home country and leaves home to try to accomplish the same in America. When her arrives on the shores of America, he has difficulty communicating himself to the coal bosses due to the language barrier. He tries to mimic the motion of a stone sculptor but the bosses simply shake their heads and hand him a pickaxe, sending him on the train to West Virginia. From that point on he is forced to work 17 hours a day with his pickaxe, his dreams crushed as he works harder and harder to produce more coal.
Coal Companies
The large coal companies in West Virginia and other places in the United States at this time are a symbol that occurs throughout the 50 poems. They are a symbol of unchecked greed and corruption. The whole mining operation is built around greed, as the coal companies siphon off the profits of the coal industry for themselves while they leave the coal workers to do the dirty work with barely enough wages to survive. In addition to taking advantage of the booming energy industry that was coal mining, the coal companies also showed their greed and hunger for profits in the way they treated the workers. Instead of spending a little bit to increase the safety of the workers as they went into these treacherous mines; creating support systems so the place wouldn't cave in, setting a proper limit on working hours, increasing the lights and warning systems in the mines, as well as stabilizing the coal elevators, the coal companies take that minimal amount of money and keep it for themselves, heedless to the horrible circumstances the workers have to endure. An exceptional quote from one of the poems that highlights this symbol is "The rich men here, they see nothing in the stone but coal."
Soot
Soot is the ashy black powder that was produced in the coal mines and was essentially extremely fine coal. It was usually found in large quantities after an explosion in the coal mines, which was why it was used as a symbol of death in the poems. We can see this symbolism on the very first page of the book, in the very first poem, titled Explosion at Winco No. 9. Due to a mechanical failure at the mine, the entire station explodes and the men inside are left charred and dead, covered in soot. There are three significant deaths in the poem, that of Junior, Willy, and Ted. All three of their bodies are almost unrecognizable to their grieving families, who are looking through the numerous amounts of bodies to find them, because the bodies are covered in thick layers of soot, giving them the appearance of the midnight sky. This soot is used not only in this case, but multiple other cases as a symbol of the death that occurs almost daily at these coal operations.
Mine Elevators
Mine elevators were used to allow the coal workers to go deep into the Earth to extract more and more coal for the profit of the large companies that employed them with unfair policies. These mine elevators were symbols of loss of hope and innocence. As the coal workers, with their blackened faces and flimsy helmets with yellow lights, descended into the black of the Earth below, the mine elevators would sway from side to side, creaking as the workers prayed to God that they would live to see another day. Going onto these mine elevators meant going away from the sun, the stars, and their beloved families. It meant increasing their chances of leaving this world exponentially and it drained the hope out of the young men that reluctantly went down with it. As they went down in these mine elevators, they were no longer the innocent workers they had been when they first started their jobs. They had faced hardships and circumstances in this dreadful place that the ordinary person could not even conjure in their worst nightmare. So when the coal workers would go down in the mine elevators, it would symbolize them losing their grip on hope and innocence, and descending into a world without either.
