Muriel Rukeyser

by

Sarah Jane Kerwin

• LAST MODIFIED: 22 November 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0253

Introduction

Writer and activist Muriel Rukeyser (b. 1913–d. 1980) was born into an affluent Jewish family and grew up in New York City. Her father was a construction engineer, and his career sparked a curiosity about technology in his daughter that is on display in her first poetry collection, Theory of Flight (1935). This early interest in weaving science and technology into poetry is indicative of Rukeyser’s lifelong tendency to tackle unexpected and seemingly incongruent subjects in her work. Rukeyser attended Vassar College for two years but had to leave in 1932, after the Great Depression took a toll on her father’s business. During the 1930s she continued to write while also becoming increasingly involved in leftist politics, traveling to cover the Scottsboro Trial in 1933 and the 1936 People’s Olympiad in Barcelona. Rukeyser burst onto the literary scene after Theory of Flight won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. By the 1940s, however, her publications became regular subjects of harsh critique from both sides of the political aisle. This resistance to her work largely stemmed from Rukeyser’s radical belief in the importance of merging poetics and politics. Such merging/boundary crossing is on display in what is perhaps her most famous work, The Book of the Dead, which was originally published in the 1938 collection U.S. 1. Scholars have read The Book of the Dead as a project of political witnessing, an example of documentary poetry, a feminist epic, and an early instance of environmental justice work. Rukeyser was radical not only politically and poetically but also personally: she had relationships with women as well as men, and raised her only son by herself. Later in her life, she gained popularity among younger feminist poets, who embraced Rukeyser as a literary foremother. Her self-edited Collected Poems was published in 1978, two years before her death. While Rukeyser is best known for her poetry, she also wrote prolifically in other genres, including essays, scripts, and fiction. Recent feminist recovery efforts have brought some of Rukeyser’s prose back into print, such as The Life of Poetry in 1996. Originally published in 1949, this treatise urges readers to embrace poetry’s potential to communicate truth and create unity. In 2013, Rukeyser’s lost Spanish Civil War novel Savage Coast was published, adding another important text to her collected works. If Rukeyser was ahead of her time, recent scholarly interest indicates the time is now ripe for her.

General Overviews

One of the most glaring absences in Rukeyser scholarship is in the biographical realm: there is as yet no full-length biography of Muriel Rukeyser. However, numerous scholars have engaged broadly with her life and work in comprehensive critical studies, beginning with Kertesz 1980. The edited collection Herzog and Kaufman 1999 seeks to understand Rukeyser’s writing from a wide range of perspectives and angles. Published more recently, Kennedy-Epstein 2022 expands the purview of Rukeyser criticism to include her literary archive, while Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive seeks to promote active communication among Rukeyser scholars through an online platform.

• Herzog, Ann F., and Janet E. Kaufman, eds. “How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?” The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

  Interdisciplinary and generically diverse collection of writings about and inspired by Rukeyser, including scholarly essays, personal reflections, and poetry. A combination of new and previously published work, organized into five parts: “Poetics and Vision,” “Activism and Teaching,” “The Body, Feminist Critique, and the Poet as Mother,” “Poetry of Witness,” and “Remembering Muriel Rukeyser.” This “hybrid” collection marks the beginnings of a resurgence of interest in Rukeyser’s life and work that has grown since its publication (p. xvi).

• Kennedy-Epstein, Rowena. Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser’s Twentieth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022.

  DOI: 10.1515/9781501762345

  Exploration of Rukeyser’s literary archive, asserting the importance of her unfinished and unpublished works for feminist literary study. Demonstrates that Rukeyser worked in a wide range of forms beyond the poetry for which she is best known, including fiction and criticism.

• Kertesz, Louise. The Poetic Vision of Muriel Rukeyser. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

  First comprehensive critical study of Rukeyser’s work. After a few chapters framing Rukeyser’s poetic project in the context of her influences and contemporaries—both literary and political—the rest of the book is a guide to reading Rukeyser’s poetry, arranged chronologically according to the decades of her life beginning with the publication of her first collection, Theory of Flight. Makes a committed case for Rukeyser’s literary significance.

• Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive.

  Interdisciplinary online hub for active engagement with Rukeyser’s work. Includes a rotating slate of selected poems, scholarship and commentary, pedagogical resources, and a “Rukeyser News” section that provides useful updates on recent publications, videos, and recordings having to do with Rukeyser.