Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet, essayist, biographer, novelist, screenwriter and political activist. She wrote across genres and forms, addressing issues related to racial, gender and class justice, war and war crimes, Jewish culture and diaspora, American history, politics, and culture.Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation."[1]Anne Sexton famously described her as "beautiful Muriel, mother of everyone";[2]Adrienne Rich wrote that she was “our twentieth-century Coleridge; our Neruda."[3]
Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme ofJudaism as a gift, was adopted by the AmericanReform andReconstructionist movements for theirprayer books - something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life.[5]
Her literary career began in 1935 when her book of poetryTheory of Flight, based on flying lessons she took, was chosen by the American poetStephen Vincent Benét for publication in theYale Younger Poets Series.[8]
Rukeyser never spoke publicly about her sexuality, but had relationships with men and women throughout her life.[9] Her literary agent Monica McCall was her partner for decades.[10] She was briefly married in 1945. In 1947, she gave birth to her only child, William Rukeyser, whose father was not the man she had married.[9]
In 1936, Rukeyser traveled to Spain to cover thePeople's Olympiad for the literary journalLife and Letters when theSpanish Civil War broke out. During her five-day stay, Rukeyser fell in love with Otto Boch, a German communist athlete who volunteered to fight the fascists and was later killed. That experience was evoked in "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century."
Rukeyser died of a stroke on February 12, 1980 at age 66, in New York, withdiabetes as a contributing factor.
Rukeyser was one of the great integrators, seeing the fragmentary world of modernity not as irretrievably broken, but in need of societal and emotional repair.
— Adrienne Rich, Essays on Art in Society: A Human Eye
Rukeyser was active in progressive politics throughout her life. In 1933, at age 21, she traveled to Scottsboro, Alabama to learn more about a case involving two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, who accused nine black boys of rape in 1931. The case had became known nationally as theScottsboro case and the boys as theScottsboro boys. Eight of the boys were convicted, even though the case lacked substantive, physical evidence.
Ultimately, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered new trials.[11] Rukeseyer's task was to cover the boys' appeal trial. She was working for theInternational Labor Defense, which handled the defendants' appeals,[12] and writing for theStudent Review, a journal of the National Student League.[13] On her journey south, she remembers seeing slogans posted: "“There is terror in Alabama,” “Free the Scottsboro boys.” She also believed that this case extended beyond the immediate issue; it was linked to the problems of women in the workplace.[14]
During her visit in Scottsboro, local police detained her after seeing her talk with Black reporters. Rukeseyer documented that detention and concluded that “women must help in the fight to free the Scottsboro Boys as well as help to solve the problems that led to their trial.”[15]
Rukeseyser also wrote for theDaily Worker and a variety of publications includingDecision andLife & Letters Today, for which she was assigned to cover thePeople's Olympiad (Olimpiada Popular, Barcelona), theCatalan government's alternative to the Nazis'1936 Berlin Olympics. Instead of reporting on the Olympiad, she witnessed the first days of theSpanish Civil War, an experience that she would describe as a "moment of proof." This formed the basis of her rediscovered autobiographical novelSavage Coast[16] and the long poemMediterranean.
With World War II on the horizon, she publishedA Turning Wind (1939). In it, she seems to reach back to her experiences during theSpanish Civil War and look ahead to the turmoil in Europe with poems such as "Correspondences." She also adds a section entitled Lives, in which she has poems about some of the individuals she later writes biographies about, such as Willard Gibbs.
Rukeseyer did not shy away from strong social or political positions. Even before the U.S. entered the conflict, she spoke to a group at Vassar College about how poetry can be “akind of weapon that can best meet these enemies, the outer cloud, the stealthy inner silence of fear” (1a, emphasis original).[18]
During the war, she publishes two volumes:Wake Island: A Poem (1942), andBeast in View (1944). As one would expect, these volumes, slim as they are, focus on the conflict underway.
During and afterWorld War II she gave a series of lectures, entitledThe Usable Truth, about art and politics in times of crisis. These were eventually published (1949) asThe Life of Poetry.[19] In it, Rukeyser makes the case that poetry is essential to democracy, essential to human life and understanding. In a publisher's note, Jan Freeman called it a book that "ranks among the most essential works of twentieth century literature." In 1996, Paris Press reissuedThe Life of Poetry, which had fallen out of print since its 1949 publication.
From the end of the war through the period ofMcCarthyism, Rukeyser was the target of sexist literary and political attacks which affected her career trajectory and publishing opportunities,[20] and the FBI compiled a thick file on her as a suspected Communist.[21]
Rukeyser taught university classes and led writing workshops for much of her life, but never became a career academic.[1] She worked at Sarah Lawrence College,[22] California Labor School,[23] and served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Teachers-Writer's Collective.[24]
In the 1960s and 1970s, when Rukeyser presided overPEN America, her feminism and opposition to theVietnam War drew a new generation to her poetry. The title poem of her final book,The Gates, is based on her unsuccessful attempt to visit Korean poetKim Chi-Ha on death row inSouth Korea. In 1968, she signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[25]
In addition to poetry, she wrote a fictionalized memoir,The Orgy; plays, among them the musicalHoudini; and screenplays. She also translated work byOctavio Paz andGunnar Ekelöf. She wrote biographies ofJosiah Willard Gibbs,Wendell Willkie, andThomas Hariot. In the early 1970s,Andrea Dworkin worked as her secretary. Also in the 1970s, Rukeyser served on the Advisory Board of theWestbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective, a New York City-based theatre group that wrote and produced plays on feminist issues.
In the television showSupernatural, Metatron the angel quotes an excerpt of Rukeyser's poem "Speed of Darkness": "The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
Rukeyser's translation of "Aqua Nocturna," a poem by Octavio Paz, was adapted byEric Whitacre for his choral composition "Water Night."[26]John Adams set one of her texts in his operaDoctor Atomic, andLibby Larsen set the poem "Looking at Each Other" in her choral workLove Songs.
Writer Marian Evans and composer Chris White collaborated on a play about Rukeyser,Throat of These Hours, titled after a line in Rukeyser'sSpeed of Darkness.[27]
Rukeyser's 5-poem sequence "Käthe Kollwitz" (The Speed of Darkness, 1968, Random House)[29] was set by Tom Myron in his composition "Käthe Kollwitz for Soprano and String Quartet," "written in response to a commission from violist Julia Adams for a work celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Portland String Quartet in 1998."[30]
Rukeyser's poem "Gunday's Child" was set to music by the experimental rock bandSleepytime Gorilla Museum.
^Unger, Leonard; Litz, A. Walton; Weigel, Molly; Bechler, Lea; Parini, Jay (January 1, 1974).American writers: a collection of literary biographies. New York: Scribner.ISBN0684197855.OCLC1041142.
^https://jewishcurrents.org/muriels-gift/ "Muriel’s Gift".February 11, 2016. Posted by Helen Engelhardt: Rukeyser’s Poems on Jewish Themesby Helen Engelhardt, accessed December 15, 2019
^Thurston, Michael (2006).Making Something Happen: American Political Poetry between the World Wars. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. pp. 177–178.ISBN9780807849798.
Barber, David S. "Finding Her Voice: Muriel Rukeyser's Poetic Development." Modern Poetry Studies 11, no. 1 (1982): 127–138
Barber, David S. "'The Poet of Unity': Muriel Rukeyser's Willard Gibbs." CLIO: A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History 12 (Fall 1982): 1–15; "Craft Interview with Muriel Rukeyser." New York Quarterly 11 (Summer 1972) and in The Craft of Poetry, edited by William Packard (1974)
Daniels, Kate, ed. Out of Silence: Selected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (1992), and "Searching/Not Searching: Writing the Biography of Muriel Rukeyser." Poetry East 16/17 (Spring/Summer 1985): 70–93
Gander, Catherine. Muriel Rukeyser and Documentary: The Poetics of Connection (EUP, 2013)
Gardinier, Suzanne. "'A World That Will Hold All The People': On Muriel Rukeyser." Kenyon Review 14 (Summer 1992): 88–105
Herzog, Anne E. & Kaufman, Janet E. (1999) "But Not in the Study: Writing as a Jew" inHow Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?: The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser.
Jarrell, Randall. Poetry and the Age (1953)
Kennedy-Epstein, Rowena. Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser's Twentieth Century (2022)
Kertesz, Louise. The Poetic Vision of Muriel Rukeyser (1980)
Levi, Jan Heller, ed. A Muriel Rukeyser Reader (1994)
Myles, Eileen, "Fear of PoetryArchived July 6, 2008, at theWayback Machine." Review ofThe Life of Poetry,The Nation (April 14, 1997). This page includes several reviews, with much biographical information.
Pacernick, Gary. "Muriel Rukeyser: Prophet of Social and Political Justice." Memory and Fire: Ten American Jewish Poets (1989)
Turner, Alberta. "Muriel Rukeyser." In Dictionary of Literary Biography 48, s.v. "American Poets, 1880–1945" (1986): 370–375; UJE;
"Under Forty." Contemporary Jewish Record 7 (February 1944): 4–9
Ware, Michele S. "Opening 'The Gates': Muriel Rukeyser and the Poetry of Witness." Women's Studies: An Introductory Journal 22, no. 3 (1993): 297–308; WWWIA, 7.
