By M. Christine Byron
Detroit poet and activist M.L. Liebler has compiled a collection of writing on working by, about, and for the working-class. The 563-page volume features fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir and song lyrics that chronicle the lives and times of workers over the last 100 years.
Ben Hamper states in the foreword “poets, rock stars, filmmakers, activists, novelists and historians lend their voices to this landmark collection about the daily grind.” Eminent American literary figures include Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Willa Cather among others. Activists include Woody Guthrie, Dorothy Day and Daniel Berrigan. There are 24 Michigan writers featured in the collection including Anne-Marie Oomen, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Michael Moore, Lolita Hernandez and Dudley Randall.
A teacher at Wayne State University, Liebler was inspired in part by his own working-class upbringing as well as classroom necessity. Instead of photocopying pages and pages for his Labor Studies class, he has gathered a rich compendium of Working Words in a single volume.
As Michael Moore has stated, “M.L. Liebler is the poet laureate of America’s working class. The collection he has assembled rings out with truth, intensity and love.”
