Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams

Poets, rock stars, filmmakers, activists, novelists, and historians lend their voices to this landmark collection about the daily grind.

From the White Stripes’s “The Big Three Killed My Baby” to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” from the folk anthems of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie to the poems of Walt Whitman and Amiri Baraka, from the stories of Willa Cather and Bret Lott to the rabble-rousing work of Michael Moore—this transcendent volume touches upon all aspects of working-class life.

M. L. Liebler is a poet, literary arts activist, and community organizer who has read and performed his work internationally. A teacher at Wayne State University, he is also the founding director of both the National Writer’s Voice Project in Detroit and Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit Writers Literary Arts Organization. He was selected as Best Detroit Poet by the Detroit Free Press and Metro Times, and his many awards include a Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence and the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, an honor shared with Maxine Hong Kingston and Junot Díaz.