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MURIEL RUKEYSER
- Rutgers University Press
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69 MURIEL RUKEYSER 1913–1980 Muriel rukeyser worked devotedly to make poetry central to everyday life and to social progress. Ideals of justice and care drive her poems, which often concern the abolition of inequality and war, the need for self-discovery, and the promise of literature and science to transform the world. Rukeyser involved herself in many of the most contentious issues of her day—from fighting fascism and corporate irresponsibility in the 1930s and 1940s to advocating civil rights and women’s rights in the 1960s and 1970s. She was equally attentive to the inner world of feeling and imagination. Although she received little positive attention until her final decades, her poetry provides a model for many women writers today, and it now seems to be finding an ever-increasing audience, just as she hoped it would. Growing up in New York City, Rukeyser was trained both in the Jewish religious tradition and at the Manhattan School of Ethical Culture, which emphasized high moral ideals and doing good in the world. She attended Vassar College and Columbia University without obtaining a degree. Instead, she was drawn to radical political action and aligned herself with the Popular Front of left-wing groups that included the Communist Party. She was arrested in Alabama at the age of twenty for protesting the conviction of the Scottsboro Boys (nine African-American youths unjustly accused of raping two white women). In 1936 she traveled to Spain to report on the People’s Olympiad (an alternative to the Nazis’ Berlin Olympics) and to support the Loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War. She also investigated the deaths from silica poisoning of mine workers working for Union Carbide in West Virginia—a venture that resulted in her long documentary poem “The Book of the Dead.” Such activities put her at risk during the McCarthy era of the 1940s and 1950s, and indeed the FBI kept a file on her and the American Legion tried to get her fired from her teaching job. Also during this time, Rukeyser, who was bisexual, gave birth to a son, William, whom she raised by herself. In the 1960s and 1970s, Rukeyser focused her political energy on expanding women’s rights, protecting civil liberties, and opposing the Vietnam War. She was arrested for protesting the war on the steps of the Capitol, she traveled to Vietnam on a peace mission, and she traveled to South Korea to support Kim Chi-Ha, a Catholic poet then facing execution. Having begun teaching at Sarah Lawrence College in 1954, she resigned in 1967 when she was granted tenure. She felt that being a tenured professor would make her “very nervous.” Instead, she supported herself by part-time teaching and poetry readings. After decades Ø Muriel Rukeyser 70 of being neglected, she started to be honored by young feminists, who saw in her a spiritual mother. Suffering from diabetes, Rukeyser had a stroke in 1964 and a second, more serious one in 1977. She kept writing until her death in 1980 at the age of sixty-six. The poems collected here represent the culmination of Rukeyser’s journey. “To Enter That Rhythm Where the Self Is Lost” and “The Poem as Mask” portray the quest for a distinctive creative identity hidden beneath an outer shell of custom and compliance. “Poem,” “The Speed of Darkness,” and “Waking This Morning” reveal the poet’s struggles against violence and injustice. And “Myth” and “St. Roach,” written in the poet’s final, parabolic style, expose the absurdity of prejudice (whether gendered, racial, religious, or national). Rukeyser’s poetry evokes the inner splits, the hard-won victories, and the ceaseless imagination of a woman poet passionately connected to the people and the ideals of her time. further reading Burt Hatlen. “Rukeyser, Muriel.” In The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry , vol. 4, ed. Jeffrey Gray, James McCorkle, and Mary McAleer Balkun, 1399–403 Westport , Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Anne F. Herzog and Janet E. Kaufman, eds. “How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?” The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Kathleen Carlton Johnson and Catherine Cucinella. “Muriel Rukeyser.” In Contemporary American Women Poets: An A-to-Z Guide, ed. Catherine Cucinella, 302–8. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Muriel Rukeyser. Collected Poems. Ed. Janet E. Kaufman, Anne F. Herzog, and Jan Heller Levi. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. — — — —. The Life of Poetry. Ashfield, Mass.: Paris Press, 1996. — — — —. Out of Silence: Selected...