Labor - Cecilia Woloch

"In Labor, Woloch pulls a voice from the archives-that of Ted Gall, a miner and union organizer in Western Pennsylvania during the first half of the twentieth century. This poem, composed almost entirely in words written by Gall himself, gives a first-hand account of what it was like in the mines, in the unions, and in the spirits of the working poor, "lifting their voices like trumpets" to sound what is somehow both historical and timely. This is an important contribution to Appalachian docupoetics and cross-racial labor solidarity. Woloch is a rescuer of language, a poet who knows where to dig up truths." -Joy Priest