"A stunning collage . . . Nowak's willingness to submerge his own voice beneath these other accounts, privileging other voices -- those of survivors, widows, journalists -- above his own. He is a legislator whose job is allowing others to be heard. "New York Times Sunday Book Review
"The aim of making poetry to make change, to make history, is what makes Nowak's work most radical and most daring, moving into the realm where knowing is a kind of collective being and doing." --Kenyon Review "Mark Nowak is restoring the perspective of working class Americans to contemporary American poetry." --Buffalo News
"Coal Mountain Elementary is an imaginative and shocking reminder of what it means, in the most human and poignant terms, to be a miner, whether in this country or in China, or for that matter anywhere in the industrial world. It is also a tribute to miners and working people everywhere. It manages, in photos and in words, to portray an entire culture. And it is a stunning educational tool." --Howard Zinn