Julia Stein: Triangle Fire Poetry and Plays and Novels and Literary Criticism

Julia Stein teaches and writes in Los Angeles

Triangle Fire Poetry and Plays and Novels and Literary Criticism

by Julia Stein

July 24,  10:06pm

Next year is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Fire which took the lives of over 120 women garment workers. Writers throughout the last 100 years have written and published poems about this event. Workplace safety is still horrendous in the United States. Below are some of the poems, novels, etc. written about the Triangle Fire. Steve Zeltzer of the San Francisco labor Arts Festival suggest we publish a booklet of Triangle fire poety.

Triangle Fire Poetry
Burnet, Dana. “Ballad of Dead Girls.” 1911.

Daigon, Ruth. Payday at the Triangle. Concord, CA: Small Poetry Press, 2001.- just died- lived in Marin County, CA

Fell, Mary. “The Triangle Fire.” The Persistence of Memory. New York: Random House, 1984.

Henderson-Holmes, Safiya . “Rituals of Spring.” Madness and a Bit of Hope. New York: Harlem River Press, 1990. – Henderson-Holmes’ poem on Triangle fire is in seven parts.

Llewellyn, Chris. Fragments from the Fire” the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire of March 25, 1911. New York: Penguin, 1987. Llewellyn’s poem on Triangle fire is book length.

Llewellyn, Chris. Steam Dummy; &, Fragments from the Fire: the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire, March 25, 1911: Poems (Huron, OH: Bottom Dog Press, 1993). Midwest writers series. “Fragments from the fire” is a revised edition of the book originally published by Viking Press in 1987. Includes bibliographical references.

Obenzinger, Hilton.”Triangle Shirtwaist Compnay.” New York on Fire. Seattle: Real Comet Press, 1989.
Phillips, Robert. “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.” Circumstances Beyond Our Control: Poems. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Pinsky, Robert. “Shirt.” The Want Bone. New York: Ecco Press, 1990.

Rosenfeld, Morris. “Memorial to Triangle Fire Victims.” Jewish Daily Forward. March 29, 1911. Five part poem.

Stein, Julia. “The Flame.” Under the Ladder to Heaven. Los Angeles, CA: West End Press, 1984.

Stein, Julia. “Triangle Fire.” Desert Soldiers. Los Angeles, Ca: California Classics, 1992.

Tarlen, Carol. “Sisters in the Flames.”

Literary Criticism, plays, novels about Triangle Fire Poetry
Bogen, Nancy. Bobe Mayse: A Tale of Washington Square. New York : Twickenham Press, 1993.

Kovacik, Karen “Words of Fire for Our Generation: Contemporary Working-Poets on the Triangle Fire,” in Women’s Studies Quarterly, 26, nos. 1-2 (Spring 1998): p. 137.

Malkiel, Theresa S. The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, ILR Press, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, 1990.
This novel, originally copyrighted in 1910, is a fictional narrative that draws upon the author’s involvement in the 1910 strike, a 13 week-long labor conflict mostly involving young immigrant women in the shirtwaist industry. The novel depicts working conditions and the way of life of workers who were contemporaries of the Triangle Fire victims.

Pielher, Christopher in collaboration with Scott Alan Evans. The Triangle Factory Fire Project. 2005.
A play that uses eyewitness accounts, court transcripts, and other archival material, to create a dramatic moment-by-moment account of this historic fire and the social upheaval that followed. Available for purchase at: http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=3500

Regan, Sylvia. “Morning Star: A Play in Three Acts,” Awake and Singing. New York: Mentor, 1995.

Tax, Meredith. Rivington Street. New York: Morrow, 1982. Novel.

Weber, Katharine. Triangle: A Novel. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2006.

Zandy, Janet. “An Essay about Triangle Fire Poetry.” College Literature. October 1997.