Jill Maji's Labor (Nightboat, 2012)

Jill Magi describes her book LABOR (Nightboat, 2012) as "A fiction ... / An installation / A handmade employee handbook." But, of course, it's also A Poetry. Read more about LABOR, and see more images of the author's text and text-work on Magi's site, here.

Find excerpted poems from LABOR at jubilat, here; and at The Brooklyn Rail, here. Read reviews at CSU's Center for Literary Publishing, here; at Tupelo Quarterly, here; and at Drunken Boat, here.

In an interview with Andy Fitch, Magi explains how, when drawing from source texts, such as those she found at the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives (a public archive at NYU's Bobst Library), "[T]he words are openings into, portals into something generative, a story about to come." 

still from LABOR: Finding Guide

LABOR is a physical, not merely intellectual work; Magi reminds us, "I actually made boxes, lined them with fake fur, and put documents in them while I was writing LABOR."
 
Even more: view Magi's LABOR: Finding Guide on YouTube; read her curated chapbook Labor Poetic Labor! (Essay Press), online here; and, be sure to check out Magi's series on Textile Poetics at Jacket2.