“Stanley’s Girl shows us once again that Susan Eisenberg is one of our most powerful voices writing poetry about working life. She draws us into her experiences as a pioneeringwoman in a male-dominated profession with the authority of a survivor and the eyes and ears of an experienced poet.”

— Jim Daniels, author of The Middle Ages

“Stanley’s Girl is a blast of poetic oxygen sorely needed in the current atmosphere of rampant sexism, racism, and xenophobia. Susan Eisenberg is the poet laureate of the labor movement. She takes the reader on a poetic journey that excites the mind and nourishes the soul.”

— Elise Bryant, Executive Director, the Labor Heritage Foundation

“Real threat permeates these intimate, bold poems, shorn of artifice and special effects, that take us inside ‘the first girl in work boots and hardhat.’ At the book’s center, pulling back ‘that curtain guarding/the ward of long-forgottens,’ Eisenberg reveals the childhood generator of the will to thread these power lines, to dare the precarious path.”

— Eleanor Wilner

“We’ll Call You If We Need You is a classic of labor history—a truly inspirational account of the heroic women who broke down barriers, overcame obstacles, and smashed stereotypes in both the building trades and the construction industry.”

— IBEW International President Lonnie Stephenson

“We’ll Call You If We Need You…is an inspirational and life-affirming book. Eisenberg tells the story through interviews with thirty women—carpenters, electricians, ironworkers, painters, and plumbers.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Incisive, lively, witty, Perpetual Care brilliantly defies its subject matter. Using an impressive range of forms, styles, and metaphors, Susan Eisenberg draws us deeply into the emotional complexities of a “flock of illnesses.” Whatever your background — as patient and/or provider — you will find this book difficult to put down. The poet’s striking photographs add resonance to both the title and these surprisingly hopeful poems.”
— Martha Collins, author, Blue Front

“In this powerful collection, Eisenberg captures the essence of being a patient in the modern health care system. Always poignant, at times playful, Eisenberg’s economical and evocative words allow the reader to experience the full array of emotion associated with being a patient. I have shared these treasures with my patients and professional colleagues alike. So real, so true, so honest — at times breathtaking!”
— Donald I. Abrams, MD, Chief, Hematology-Oncology, San Francisco General Hospital, Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of California San Francisco

Selection of poems from Perpetual Care

“[Susan Eisenberg] introduces us to the feminist pioneers who first ventured onto building sites, braving hatred, abuse, physical suffering, and even mortal danger. . . . This is an inspirational and life-affirming book constructed so skillfully that the reader is kept constantly engaged.”
— Samuel C. Florman, New York Times Book Review Full Review

“Eisenberg captures the strength and intelligence of tradeswomen through the simplest of devices–hanging back. She comes in only to introduce and frame their voices–with clarification, personal accounts, a bit of history or context. Eisenberg’s book engenders a new respect for the women in the trades and the difficult work they do.”
– The Progressive

Read a sample chapter

“Susan Eisenberg, in these plain-spoken, not-for-the-faint-of-heart poems, resists the historical amnesia and denial American culture propagates. Funny, harrowing, loving, fierce, political, personal–she aims for the blind spot, for what we can’t see; connects the ’60s to the present, and, in the act of honest remembering, reminds us who we are.”
— Eleanor Wilner, author, The Girl with Bees in Her Hair

“With Eisenberg’s signature precision, humor, emotional intensity and, above all, perspective, these poems never shy away from the complex nature of good and evil as experienced by actual human beings.”
— Tom Wayman, author, I’ll Be Right Back

“Susan Eisenberg is the best kind of political poet–tough, plain-spoken, but alive to the human complexities that can derail the expected moral. She has learned her trade from real masters–and her pacing is unerring.”
– Alan Williamson, author, Love and the Soul

“This is a powerful book filled with honest, unpretentious, fearless, and beautiful poems.”
– Thomas Lux, author, Split Horizons

“The ‘ideas’ in this book are firmly embedded in the ‘things’; one can find here the symbolic resonances that bring one back to reread a book of literature many times. These cleanly crafted poems are also about fear and the courage which overcomes it, about the journey of any fearful, determined and courageous spirit into any unknown.”
– Denise Levertov, from the Foreword