Foreword / Ben "Riverhead" Hamper
Introduction / M L Liebler
Part 1: Labor Poems And Songs:
Spitting in the leaves / Maggie Anderson
Closed mill / Maggie Anderson
Written after learning slaves in ancient Greece and Rome had 115 holiday a year / Antler
Migration scene c 1939 / Albert Aubert
Poem some people will have to understand / Amiri Baraka
My father teaches me to dream / Jan Beatty
Poetry workshop at the homeless shelter / Jan Beatty
Waitress's instructions on tipping or get the cash up and don't waste my time / Jan Beatty
Prayer from a picket line / Daniel Berrigan
My son is worried about me / Laura Boss
League of defense / Melba Joyce Boyd
Year of now snow / Melba Joyce Boyd
Company pool / Michael Casey
Working for profit / Andrei Codrescu
Accounts payable / Wanda Coleman
One black mark / David Connolly
Requiem for 'two dago reds' / Carlos Cortez
Three spirts (Frank Little, Wesley Everest, Joe Hill) / Carlos Cortez
I got the blue-ooze 93 / Jayne Cortez
We don't wanna peso much / Carlos Cumpian
Soon it's robots / Carlos Cumpian
White heat / Emily Dickinson
Red pocket knife / Geri DiGiorno
Revolutionary letter #19 (for the poor people's campaign) / Diane di Prima
Assembly room women / Sue Doro
Tiny griefs / Sean Thomas Dougherty
Last thoughts on Woody Guthrie / Bob Dylan
Union Sundown / Bob Dylan
Lonesome death of Hattie Carroll / Bob Dylan
Visiting my parents' grave / W D Ehrhart
Have you been to jail for justice? / Anne Feeney
Notes from a slave ship / Edward Field
Harder options (Hamtramck, Michigan) / Vievee Francis
Found in Juarez / Vievee Francis
Auto trade / Stewart Francke
Lucky man cafe / Cynthia Gallaher
Daddy, we called you / Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Growing up Italian / Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Herald news calls Paterson a "gritty city" / Maria Mazziotti Gillan
After school on ordinary days / Maria Mazziotti Gillan
1913 massacre / Woody Guthrie
Bury me in a free land / Frances E W Harper
Walker Evans photograph: Factory Street, Amsterdam, New York, 1930 / Stephen Haven
Putting up beans / Adelle Hedge Coke
Off-season / Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Samuella's fufu / Laban Carrick Hill
Sweatshop poem / Edward Hirsch
Second-story warehouse / Edward Hirsch
Last wobbly / Mikhail Horowitz
Detroit addendum / Murray Jackson
Prayer to a farm worker / Victor Jara, translated by Mariela Griffor
Talking dust bowl blues / X J Kennedy
Comin' back in a Cadillac / Al Kooper
Shipfitter's wife / Dorianne Laux.
from The Cleaving / Li-Young Lee
Of love and other disasters / Philip Levine
Arrival and departure / Philip Levine
Death of Mayakovsky / Philip Levine
Library days / Philip Levine
On the scrap / M L Liebler
Making it right / M L Liebler
Riding into California / Shirley Geok-Lin Lim
Builders / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Deadhouse at the workhouse / Thomas Lux
What I see when I drive to work / Thomas Lux
Houseplant / Caroline Maun
Abdication of the bees / Caroline Maun
Beginning with a line by di Prima / Michael McClure
Grandfather's breath / Ray McNiece
Grandfather: frailty is not the story / D H Melhem
Anonymous donation / Gary Metras
Telephone repairman / Joseph Millar
Ed's auto repair / Joseph Millar
from $00-Steel-Train / Mark Nowak
Cameron / Matthew Olzmann
Ode to dirt in an old farmer's lungs / Anne-Marie Oomen
Carolina Summer / Richard Peabody
Forgiveness device / Richard Peabody
Factory horn exodus / Jeff Poniewaz
Well paid slaves / Jeff Poniewaz
Day off / Minnie Bruce Pratt
Ancestors / Dudley Randall
Old Witherington / Dudley Randall
Groundskeeper busted reading in the custodial water closet / Kevin Rashid
What we do to live / Judith Roche
Work work work / Trinidad Sanchez, Jr
Arise, o wobblies! / Edward Sanders
Great wobbly free speech struggles / Edward Sanders
Shirtwaist makers strike of '09- '10 / Edward Sanders
from America: a history of verse volume 1 1900-1939 / Edward Sanders
Injustice against Debs / Edward Sanders
Hard way was the only way you knew / Vivian Shipley
Little guy / Marc Kelly Smith
Day worker / Lamont B Steptoe
Seamstress / Lamont B Steptoe
Poem for my brother Timmy / Quincy Troupe
This is not my beautiful house: five uncanny sites / Chris Tysh
Lakeshore drives / Anca Vlasopolos
Window repair / Mick Vranich
Butcher's apron / Diane Wakoski
Tony's dad / Barry Wallenstein
Ode to Elizabeth / Joe E Weil
Father hunger and son / Roger Weingarten
Big three killed my baby / Jack White
I hear America singing / Walt Whitman
Turn the radio to a gospel station / Jeanne Bryner
Selling manure / Bonnie Jo Campbell
King Cole's American salvage / Bonnie Jo Campbell
Paul's case / Willa Cather
Friday night shift at the Taco House Blues (wah-wah) / Wanda Coleman
from Maggie: a girl of the streets / Stephen Crane
No pets / Jim Ray Daniels
Spring today / Kathleen Glynn
from Just like in the movies / Bill Harris
No puedo bailar / Lolita Hernandez
Old west / Christopher T Leland
Swallowing camels / M L Liebler
Sister Detroit / Colleen McElroy
I can't sleep / Clifford Odets
Problem with Mrs P / Michael Shay
Outside the millgate / Larry Smith
Layoff / Jeff Vande Zande
To body to chicken / Xu Xi
Part 3: Non-Fiction, Histories, And Memories:
from Life in the iron mills (or The Korl woman) / Rebecca Harding Davis
from In fields and factories / Dorothy Day
from Loaves & fishes / Dorothy Day
Navigating north Jersey by CPS (class positioning system) / Jennifer Gillan
from Bound for glory / Woody Guthrie
from Riverhead / Ben Hamper
from The Undertaking / Thomas Lynch
from Fortunate son / Dave Marsh
Horatio Alger must die (from Dude, where's my country?) / Michael Moore