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Rukeyser Muriel
The Life of Poetry
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Observing that poetry is a natural part of our pastimes and rituals, Muriel Rukeyser opposes elitist attitudes and confronts Americans' fear of feeling. Multicultural and interdisciplinary, this collection of essays and speeches makes an irrefutable case for the centrality of poetry in American life.
In an era in which art is increasingly dictated by marketers, and publishers and filmmakers don't seem to make a move without first consulting focus groups, poetry might seem, at first, a bit superfluous. It's "difficult," for one thing, subject to many interpretations; it's also deeply personal, unsuited to creation by committee. So what possible use does the modern world have for poetry? Muriel Rukeyser answers this question in The Life of Poetry, a book that just keeps coming back in time for each new generation. First published in 1949, it was reissued in 1974 and returns to print again in 1997, courtesy of Paris Press. Rukeyser's presents many definitions of poetry: it is an exchange of energy, a record of the emotional meaning of every moment, a concentration of universal joys and sorrows. It is a thing "in which we may live and which will save us." Rukeyser, herself a poet, was a woman who understood that poetry alone was not enough to save the world. An activist on behalf of West Virginia coal miners and later censored South Korean writers, Rukeyser had an intimate understanding of the place principle and action occupy in saving the world. But the world needs a soul as well as a mind and a will, and for Rukeyser, poetry fills that role. The Life of Poetry is about poetry, but within that realm fall subjects as varied as musicals; war; and the works of Whitman, Dickinson, and Lorca, among others. Rukeyser died in 1980, but her fierce intelligence and great heart live on in this marvelous meditation on the universal applications of poetry.
The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser
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Muriel Rukeyser held a visionary belief in the human capacity to create social change through language. She earned an international reputation as a powerful voice against enforced silences of all kind, against the violence of war, poverty, and racism. Her eloquent poetry of witness-of the Scottsboro Nine, the Spanish Civil War, the poisoning of the Gauley Bridge laborers-split the darkness covering a shameful world. In addition to the complete texts of her twelve previously published books, this volume also features new poems discovered by the editors; Rukeyser's translations, including the first English translations of Octavio Paz's work; early work by Rukeyser not previously published in book form; and the controversial book-length poem Wake Island. An introduction by the editors traces Rukeyser's life and literary reputation and complements discerning annotations and textual notes to the poems.
Muriel Rukeyser: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)
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Muriel Rukeyser (1913–80) published her first book—the powerfully experimental Theory of Flight—at age twenty-two, and went on to an adventurous and prolific career as poet, translator, and political activist. Her expansive energies sought a poetry in which politics, geography, sexuality, mythology, and autobiography could find fused and fluid expression. From her early, brilliantly cinematic "Poem Out of Childhood" through excerpts from her long wartime "Letter to the Front" to her late "Resurrection of the Right Side," written after her stroke, this selection represents the many sides and selves of a major poet.
A Muriel Rukeyser Reader
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- ISBN13: 9780393313239
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A Muriel Rukeyser Reader gathers a generous selection of poetry and prose spanning the forty-five years of Rukeyser's writing life. Bringing together works only sparsely anthologized or long out of print, this book is a resource for understanding the range, depth, and originality of this pioneering writer whom the poet Anne Sexton named "Muriel, mother of everyone."
The Orgy
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Those who have traveled know the experience of extended time and sharpened perception. Muriel Rukeyser’s account of Ireland's Puck Fair, the last existing pagan festival of the goat, captures just that state of consciousness. Set in County Kerry, Ireland, The Orgy evokes this great American poet’s journey of sensual and psychological transformation in the midst of a lush account of Irish culture and tradition.
Muriel Rukeyser's the Book of the Dead
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The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser was published as part of her 1938 volume U.S. 1. The poem, which is probably the most ambitious and least understood work of Depression-era American verse, commemorates the worst industrial accident in U.S. history, the Gauley Tunnel tragedy. In this terrible disaster, an undetermined number of men—likely somewhere between 700 and 800—died of acute silicosis, a lung disorder caused by prolonged inhalation of silica dust, after working on a tunnel project in Fayette County, West Virginia, in the early 1930s. After many years of relative neglect, The Book of the Dead has recently returned to print and has become the subject of critical attention. In Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead,” Tim Dayton continues that study by characterizing the literary and political world of Rukeyser at the time she wrote The Book of the Dead. Rukeyser’s poem clearly emerges from 1930s radicalism, as well as from Rukeyser’s deeply felt calling to poetry. After describing the world from which the poem emerged, Dayton sets up the fundamental factual matters with which the poem is concerned, detailing the circumstances of the Gauley Tunnel tragedy, and establishes a framework derived from the classical tripartite division of the genres—epic, lyric, and dramatic. Through this framework, he sees Rukeyser presenting a multifaceted reflection upon the significance, particularly the historical significance, of the Gauley Tunnel tragedy. For Rukeyser, that disaster was the emblem of a history in which those who do the work of the world are denied control of the vast powers they bring into being. Dayton also studies the critical reception of The Book of the Dead and determines that while the contemporary response was mixed, most reviewers felt that Rukeyser had certainly attempted something of value and significance. He pays particular attention to John Wheelwright’s critical review and to the defenses of Rukeyser launched in the 1980s and 1990s by Louise Kertesz and Walter Kalaidjian. The author also examines the relationship between Marxism as a theory of history governing The Book of the Dead and the poem itself, which presents a vision of history. Based upon primary scholarship in Rukeyser’s papers, a close reading of the poem, and Marxist theory, Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead” offers a comprehensive and compelling analysis of The Book of the Dead and will likely remain the definitive work on this poem.
Rukeyser Muriel News
About Adrienne Rich - The Nation.
The Nation., NY - May 21, 2009
About Adrienne RichShe edited Muriel Rukeyser's Selected Poems for the Library of America. She is a recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2006 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, among other awards. Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems
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For peace, two stories must merge - Columbia Daily Tribune
Columbia Daily Tribune, MO - May 25, 2009
For peace, two stories must mergeBy SALEEM ALHABASH Muriel Rukeyser once said “the universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Stories not only make up our universe but shape who we are, how we think and how we live (or decide to live) our lives. Stories become part of our souls;
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The Man Who Talked Back - Forbes
Forbes, NY - May 14, 2009
The Man Who Talked BackThe most egregious of their tributes was an epic poem by Muriel Rukeyser, embarrassing both in its length (330 pp.) and bathos: "Wounded he lay. And for good reason. His wounds our wounds." When Willkie finally ran for President in 1940, he did not win
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