A Muriel Rukeyser Reader

by Muriel Rukeyser, Jan Heller Levi (Editor)

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."

Genres: Poetry

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 1995

About the author

Muriel Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation".

One of her most powerful pieces was a group of poems entitled The Book of the Dead (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.

Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books, something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life.

Reviews

[Seamus Thompson]

Picked this up at the library after a conversation with a new acquaintance. Planned to sample it for 20-30 minutes before moving on to the other two books I checked out at the same time. Instead, I spent more than three hours reading poem and after poem, throughout the collection, and copying favorite bits. Eager to dive back in soon. Some favorites:

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry :
Not Angles, angels
(from Poem Out Of Childhood, 1935)

After awhile, of course, we left,
the room was getting so jammed with editors.
(from Three Sides of a Coin, 1935)

But really I cannot hear the words. I cannot hear the song.
This may still be my dream
But the night seems very long.
(from The Child in the Great Wood, 1944)

I make my magic
of forgotten things"
night and nightmare and the midnight wings
of childhood butterflies--
(from I Make My Magic, 1973)

When you see a woman riding the air
Well, you see a woman playing with fire,
A woman made of storm and desire
And she loves the whole damn zoo.
But you can be sure, whatever I do,
...That I need my beer and bacon too.
(from Beer and Bacon, 1973)

Open your eyes,
Dream but don't guess.
Your biggest surprise
Comes after Yes.
(from Yes, 1973)

[atito]

haha yeah

[Cooper Renner]

Did I read every page? Of course not. But enough. At her best she excels most of her contemporaries, even very early on. I want to see more of US1.

[Elaine Nelson]

This is my 2nd take at this book, which I've owned (and moved!) for quite a while, and I think it's official: I don't really like Muriel Rukeyser. I've tried, mostly for the sake of Adrienne Rich, whose poetry I love, but something about Rukeyer's work just doesn't click for me. I should probably analyze what that is as I work on re-inventing my own poetic style.

[George]

This is a great gathering of work by a great American poet. The blend of her most important poems (including "Effort At Speech Between Two People," from her first book) with excerpts from her prose work, The Life of Poetry, makes the "dialog" at the heart of Rukeyser's work all the more profound.

[Amira Hanafi]

especially theory of flight

[Mills College Library]

811 R934m 1994