Firebrand Poets: Spielers of Discontent, Psalmists of Sabotage, Advocates of Iron Law | Kevin I. Slaughter
Seven booklets from Underworld Amusements & Union of Egoists in the Stand Alone Journal Series. Limited to 33 sets, signed and numbered by Kevin I. Slaughter.
In 1916, sixpence bought you a copy of Poems of the Revolution from the Australian I.W.W., postage paid. It opened with an elegy for the executed Joe Hill. Within months, the booklet was being held up in court as evidence against twelve men. There are worse reviews of books of poetry, I suppose.
Historian Kevin I. Slaughter, author of The Radical Book Shop of Chicago, brings four rare chapbooks from the radical labor press back into print. Some have never been reprinted, much less studied. Two survive in only one known copy apiece, as far as Slaughter’s research could establish.
Two new booklets draw on Slaughter’s research into the people who wrote, printed, and circulated radical literature. The first reconstructs the histories of the four chapbooks. In Blessed Are the Strong, Slaughter makes a groundbreaking case for Arthur Desmond’s neglected influence on early twentieth-century radical labor and socialist culture. From Illinois miners chanting his lines to Wobblies and socialists adapting them in print, the evidence makes Ragnar Redbeard’s reach hard to dispute. For some of those readers, “might is right” was an argument for what workers could do with power of their own.
Inside the set
№ 1 — Firebrand Poets: Spielers of Discontent, Psalmists of Sabotage, Advocates of Iron Law
Kevin I. Slaughter · Baltimore, 2026
36 pages · 5.5 × 8.5 in. · SA1350
A guide to the chapbooks, their contributors, and their publication histories, with a combined index of poems.
№ 2 — Poems of the Revolution
I.W.W. · Australia, 1916
48 pages · 4.25 × 5.5 in. · SA1351
An anthology that opens with Ralph Chaplin’s elegy for Joe Hill and finds room for Shelley, Kipling, and Redbeard.
№ 3 — Rhymes of Revolt
Wilfrid Gribble · Canada, 1913
52 pages · 4.25 × 5.5 in. · SA1352
A Canadian socialist soapboxer takes on religion, elections, and the cost of living in verse.
№ 4 — Steel and Slag
Louis Melis · Chicago, 1923
16 pages · 5.5 × 8.5 in. · SA1353
Seven poems from a Wobbly soapboxer who left little behind in print, including verses on Gene Debs and Frank Little.
№ 5 — Songs of Love and Rebellion
Covington Hall · New Orleans, 1915
49 pages · 5.5 × 8.5 in. · SA1354
Love poems, strike verse, and Hall’s own “Might Is Right” between the same covers.
№ 6 — Blessed Are the Strong: The Lost Poetics of Ragnar Redbeard and His Disciples
Kevin I. Slaughter · Baltimore, 2026
44 pages · 5.5 × 8.5 in. · SA1355
An essay and anthology tracing the afterlife of Redbeard’s verse among labor radicals.
№ 7 — A secret bonus booklet.
