A Muriel Rukeyser Reader [Hardcover]

Jan Heller Levi (Author), Muriel Rukeyser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1994

Presents a selection of poetry and prose which span the 45 years of Muriel Rukeyser's writing life. Bringing together works only sparsely anthologized or long out of print, this book offers an understanding of the range, depth and originality of this writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

It's easy to see from this collection, which spans 1935-76, why many regarded elements of Rukeyser's work as beyond or before her time. By combining and recombining images of political leaders, body memory, physicists, sexuality, and more, the poet created a personal dreamscape, a cinema verit{‚}e full of jump cuts intersplicing poets, painters, and philosophers that presaged the age of MTV and poetry videos. Underpinning the densely worked surfaces, however, are the poet's recurrent musings on how and why we live, our relationships to ourselves, our physical bodies, the laws of gravity, the nature of fear, and the evolution of the poetic image. In "Letter to the Front" (from Beast in View, 1944), Rukeyser encapsulates her view of life as a woman, a Jew, and an artist: "The gift is torment. Not alone the still / Torture, isolation; or torture of the flesh. / That may come also. But the accepting wish, / The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee / For every human freedom, suffering to be free, / Daring to live for the impossible." She constantly reminds us, "Exchange is creation." Whitney Scott

Review

1
1.
10
2
2. The Committee Room
3. The Lover
3. The Trial
5
7
9
All History
Anemone
Artifact
The Backside Of The Academy
Ballad Of Orange And Grape
Beer And Bacon
The Book Of The Dead: Absalom
The Book Of The Dead: Alloy
The Book Of The Dead: Gauley Bridge
The Book Of The Dead: Mearl Blankenship
The Book Of The Dead: Statement: Philippa Allen
The Book Of The Dead: The Disease
The Book Of The Dead: The Disease: After-effects
The Book Of The Dead: The Road
Cattle-trains
A Certain Music
Charles Ives, Sels.
Child In The Great Wood
Children's Elegy
The Children's Orchard
College Radicals
Coney Island
The Conjugation Of The Paramecium
Darkness Music
Definitions
Desdichada
Despisals
The Doctors, Selections
Double Dialogue: Homage To Robert Frost
Double Ode
Effort At Speech Between Two People
Eyes Of Night-time
F. O. M. (the Death Of Matthiessen)
Flying To Hanoi
Foghorn In Horror
For Fun
For My Son
From A Play : Publisher's Song
From The Duck-pond To The Carousel
The Gates
Gradus Ad Parnassum
Haying Before Storm
Homage To Literature
I Make My Magic
Islands
Kathe Kollwitz
King's Mountain
A Line Of Birds, A Line Of Gods. Of Bells
Lives: Ann Burlak
Lives: Gibbs
Long Enough
Look
Looking At Each Other
Love And Its Doors And Windows
M-day's Child Is Fair Of Face
More Of A Corpse Than A Woman
Mortality
Myth
Night Feeding
Not To Be Printed, Not To Be Said, Not To Be Thought
Nuns In The Wind
Orgy
The Outer Banks
The Overthrow Of One O'clock At Night
Own Country
Painters
Panacea
Parallel Invention
Poem
The Poem As Mask
Poem Out Of Childhood
Poem White Page White Page Poem
Rainbow
Reading Time: 1 Minute 26 Seconds
Recovering
Remember
Resurrection Of The Right Side
The Return
Rondel
Sand-quarry With Moving Figures
Secrets Of American Civilization
The Sixth Night: Waking
Sky Overhead
Song
The Speed Of Darkness
St. Roach
Submit Your Own Answer
Suicide Blues
Then
Then I Saw What The Calling Was
Theory Of Flight: Theory Of Flight
This Place In The Ways
Three Sides Of A Coin
Time Is Metric
Tree
Trinity Churchyard (for My Mother & Her Ancestor, Akiba)
Turbulence
Waiting For Icarus
Waking This Morning
Walks
Waterlily Fire (for Richard Griffith)
What Do We See?
What I See
What The King Said
Who In One Lifetime
Yes
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1st edition (February 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393035662
• ISBN-13: 978-0393035667
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,812,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem, February 25, 2001

By 

"brybo" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Muriel Rukeyser Reader (Paperback)

A thinker's book. Wonderful to read Rukeyser wrestle with and explain life, art, thought. She is by turns poet, biographer, essayist and character. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Her art and criticism explore the same themes. The effect is surprisingly consistent in a book comprised of several incomplete selections. If you have any doubts, find a poem or two of hers and try it on for size (Gauley Bridge, for example). If you're fascinated, try this volume. Here's a sample. Rukeyser on poetry (from The Life of Poetry): "A first-rate scientist, or a fine prose writer, is able to say, 'How can I know a good poem? I can tell an honest piece of work in my own field from a phony piece of work, but how can I tell a fine poem from a phony poem? And what has to be said to such a question is that these are people who cannot trust their emotional reactions, their total reactions."

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, July 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Muriel Rukeyser Reader (Hardcover)

Muriel Rukeyser was certainly a terrific and fascinating poet. These are strange and striking creations, and originality is present on every page. I don't know how she got stuck with Adrienne Rich as her introducer, but one may skip that and go on to a memorable experience. Rukeyser was a true original.