The Essential Muriel Rukeyser: Poems

by Muriel Rukeyser, Natasha Trethewey (Foreword)

The definitive edition of selected work from a poet whose influence continues to be widely felt today, introduced by Natasha TretheweyEngaging closely with the violence, oppression, and injustice that she witnessed in her lifetime, Muriel Rukeyser was one of the seminal poets of the mid-twentieth century. Closely informed by issues relating to equality, social justice, feminism, and Judaism, her impassioned poetry was often seen as a mode of social protest, but it was also heralded for its deep emotional impact; its personal perspective; forthright discussion of the female experience, particularly sex and single parenthood at a time when these topics were largely taboo; and its wide-ranging exploration of genre and form. As Adrienne Rich “Muriel Rukeyser’s poetry is unequalled in the twentieth-century United States…She pushes us…to enlarge our sense of what poetry is about in the world, and of the place of feelings and memory in politics.”

The Essential Muriel Rukeyser represents the curation of Rukeyser’s most enduring and urgent work, gathered in one volume that spans the many decades of her life and career, and with an introduction from Natasha Trethewey, one of our most important contemporary poets.

Genres: Poetry, 20th Century, Judaism

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2021

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

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first time reading anything by Muriel Rukeyser….

Muriel Rukeyser (1913- to 1980) held a visionary belief in the human capacity to create social change through *language*.
I believe this too (followed by action taken).

Muriel Rukeyser earned an international reputation as a powerful voice against enforced silences of all kind, against the violence of war, poverty, and racism.
I felt a little sad to learn that she died at age 66. She really was a gifted poet and an advocate for all things right!!!

In these poems, she explored feminism, Judaism, parenthood, children, poor and starved, victims of all kinds, betrayal, injustice of all kinds, fight, travel, history in West Virginia and social work she did there, the miners, graveyards, dirty drinking water, disease, medicine, neighborhoods, power plants, corn fields, the government, wounded armies, Absalom, revolutions, the Arthur Peyton case, fears our present current evils, the to move forward with love, kindness and restore with intensity.

Each poem flowed into the next effortlessly.
They never felt separated from each other — their links together simply continued to highlight issues of struggle— as relevant today as when they were written.

[Jed Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Visceral poems that are both political and personal. I especially loved the shorter more academic pieces.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only started reading Rukeyser-- only even heard of her-- last winter, at age 45. I can't believe this. Now I can't stop reading her. Her poems explicate the bewilderment of being (motherhood, oppression, existence itself) with a profundity that is ... transcendent.
These poems are political,
but they do not fall into the trap/trope
of didactic texts that hit the reader over the
head with their message
:
trading education for art.
...
She exposed many injustices, hard truths through her work,
and through the evocation of FEEEEEEEEEELING, rather than
straight knowing.
Please read some Rukeyser!

An especially apt moment from this collection, from
"Eighth Elegy. Children's Elegy," first published in 1949:

"Yes, I have seen their eyes. In the peaceful gardens
the dark flowers now are always children's eyes,
full-colored, haunted as evening under fires
showered from the sky of a burning country."

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adrienne Rich must have been mightily influenced by Rukeyser in the late 1950s as she was “opening” her verse from the formalism in which she began. The “documentary” poems together called “The Book of the Dead”, the myth-based poems, and the late anti-authoritarian sequence “The Gates” are most interesting to me.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful compilation of some of her best poetry. However, Trethewey’s introduction left too much to be considered. For new readers of Rukeyser, especially since this was printed in 2021, more background of the poet should have been explored/researched.

[Richard Magahiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book not knowing much about the poet, just an idea of the time when she lived but not what currents in American poetry she was associated with. The opy I had contained a short introduction by Natasha Trethewey mentioning the parallels between Rukeyser's time and our own, but did not really set the context, so all I can report on now is the impression each poem gave on its own. Without a chronology, a sense of what she was reading, what the reception to her work was, it was hard to gain a feeling for the nuances which I could tell were present.

Many of the poems comment on events taking place at the time they were composed, including some long pieces about Appalachian miner's labor demands coming from the diagnosis of silicosis in their lungs. I could see a sympathy for the powerless fighting against powerful opponents running through these, whether those adversaries were corporate or ideological. In another of these poems, 'Letters to the Front,' she brings up issues of identity during the second World War. She talks here about the action she feels needs to be taken, not the abstract reasoning behind the fighting. It seems to me that each one has a moral center which isn't too hard to locate. As to theme, other poems describe urban life ('City of Monuments'), reproductive issues ('The Speed of Darkness'), mythic images ('Private Life of the Sphinx,' 'Niobe,' 'Myth,' and 'Waiting for Icarus'), and the speaker's legacy after death ('What They Said') with great conviction. Here and there the language takes flight, but most of the time it is sober, plain-spoken, serious, never confessional. There are short poems and long ones, some of which are self-aware about the act of writing, others which are so down to earth they seem almost prosy.

I feel that this is a good collection to get acquainted with the work of a poet who doesn't get a lot of mention now. Her style and areas of concern are quite different from mine, but I think reading through these poems and working out how they fit in is probably a good exercise for anyone interested in writing.

I received this book in the form of an Advance Reader's Copy through Netgalley so that I could post a review of my impressions.

[madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel so embarrassed I didn't know about Muriel Rukeyser before now. This collection of poems, some that read like journalism, is magical. Is poetic journalism a thing? It should be, I guess. That's what it feels like.

Rukeyser is inspiring because was was an independent, queer, Jewish woman writing with incredible conviction from the 1920s, 1930s, onward -- a woman who used her poetry to raise alarm bells and calls for action on injustices around the world. Her work is so, so powerful.

Rukeyser writes passionately about social justice, poverty, war, love, sex, family, being Jewish. Many of the poems had a journalistic feel (because she was a journalist!) where she would detail a contemporary historical event through court statements, interviews, documents, and the place where the events took place. Rukeyser has a keen eye for injustice, and advocated for marginalized people and communities through her work. Her work mercilessly supported communities that were being silenced (or killed) -- either by the state or by corporations for the sake of profit.

I highly recommend it and LOVED this collection. Go read Muriel Rukeyser!!! Now if only someone would publish a biography of her. Apparently many have tried and all have failed. I would eat that shit UP!

Thank you to #NetGalley and Ecco for sharing a copy of this book with me in exchange for an honest review.

[Camille Dungy]

My plan had been to suggest you turn to The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (University of Pittsburg Press, 2006), and you still should, but this new volume (Ecco, 2021) collects much of Rukeyser’s most moving and engaged work, including excerpts from her still relevant U.S. 1, a 1938 volume that contained “The Book of the Dead,” her astonishingly powerful documentary collage about life in America’s coal mining regions. Rukeyser (1913–1980) was one of the twentieth century’s best American poets. Her influence has been registered by the likes of Alice Walker, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, and Sharon Olds. (I recommend reading “A Student’s Memoir of Muriel Rukeyser,” which you can find in By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry, edited by Molly McQuade [Graywolf, 2000], in which Olds has much to say about learning from Rukeyser’s life and work.) I am happy to know that this new collection will keep Rukeyser’s poetry in the hands of a new generation of readers.

Review published originally with Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/2021/07/thi...

[Bel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poem (1968)

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

[Loocuh Frayshure · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recognize that the content of her poetry is a BIG deal for when she was writing, as well as that her form is technically far above par, but MAN—

I just do not mesh with Rukeyser’s style.

The insistence on simple rhyming schemes and the colon spam put me at arm length, but when it comes to poetry, I very much like short one-two page pieces. The shorter the better, usually. This is filled with so many 4+ page, multiparters.

The dedication to depicting the completely preventable tragedy of all the miners suffering from lung death via silica inhalation ruled, and my favorite piece is “Myth”, but this is a strong 5/10 for me. Not a fan, but not actually bad at all. Subjectively this is like a 3.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure how this particular poetry slid under the radar, but this is the first time I'm really reading her work, and I don't know why I hadn't up until now. Rukeyser is a deeply moving and solid poet, mixing emotion with blutness and reality. I like much of her work in this collection, and hope that I can read more in the near future.

*Book provided by NetGalley

[Ashley Bound · Rating 5 out of 5]

With a forward from the distinctly American voice of Natasha Tretheway, this collection of Muriel Rukeyser's work speaks to our daily lives as clearly as it spoke to hers. Clear and cutting, she calls out senseless violence, masked life, and what it means to love in a broken world. A wonderful collection for readers new to Rukeyser's voice as well as those already familiar with her force.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I had even a smidge of the skill that Muriel possessed, I would be utterly thrilled. THRILLED!

[hjh · Rating 4 out of 5]

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / the world would split open”

“How shall we venture home?/ How shall we tell each other of the poet?” (204)