How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?: The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser [Hardcover]

Anne F. Herzog (Editor), Janet E. Kaufman (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 1999

Muriel Rukeyser, the late poet, journalist, translator, biographer, pilot, and social activist, has been described as an "American Genius" and our "20th-century Whitman." Anne Sexton and Erica Jong both referred to Muriel Rukeyser as "the Mother of Everyone." To read her collected work is to track American history through the century and to question with her the particular nature of the American imagination. Rukeyser began publishing in the 1930s, writing about Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro boys, and the Popular Front’s stand against fascism, insisting always on the link between public subjects and the personal life. Until she died in 1980 at the age of 66, she persisted in bringing the events of the world into poetry, and poetry into the world. Her writing stretches the American poetic imagination, indeed the very definitions of American poetry, and guarantees her place in twentieth-century American literature. "How Shall We Teach Each Other of the Poet?" brings together the voices of those who have been challenged by the complexity and richness of Rukeyser’s poems: former friends, colleagues, editors, and students reflecting on their personal knowledge of the poet; contemporary poets probing the significance of Rukeyser as one who influenced their own poetry, and scholars offering new interpretations of her work.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Even if Muriel Rukeyser never attained the status of Whitman or Dickinson, the poets Adrienne Rich compares her to in one of these essays, she was an American original. She was less a marquee poet than a force of nature, an imposing woman who gave herself to a variety of aesthetic positions, political causes, and passionate friendships and antagonisms. (Gerald Stern recalls being taunted by an audience member when he and Rukeyser read together once and starting to defend himself by saying, "I don't want to be mean," only to hear Rukeyser whisper, "Be mean, be mean.") Herzog and Kaufman, English professors at West Chester University and the University of Utah, respectively, gather writings by 37 Rukeyser fans; a number of these pieces are poems, the most luminous of which is Richard Howard's "A Sibyl of 1979," in which he describes being given a computer that had baffled Rukeyser, finding in it some draft phrases she had left there, and making them into his own tribute to her. For larger public and academic libraries.ADavid Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Rukeyser (1913^-80) was shunned by the academy for the freedom of her thinking, her humanitarianism, and her unabashedly Whitmanesque poetic voice. As Denise Levertov, one of the nearly 40 poets and literary scholars whose considerations of and tributes to Rukeyser are collected here, writes, Rukeyser "consistently fused lyricism and overt social and political concern." Reginald Gibbons, another insightful admirer, observes that "Rukeyser aimed not at grace but at inquiry and witness and re-imagining." A writer, scholar, single parent, pilot, and activist, Rukeyser linked art to politics and science, and glided with ease from poetry to biography to children's books to translation to literary criticism, a fluidity that endeared her to poets but vexed critics and led to a vanishing of her works like that of an endangered species. But editors Herzog and Kaufman and contributors such as Gerald Stern, Adrienne Rich, and Richard Howard have set out to redress this neglect, and Rukeyser does, indeed, emerge from these pages, vibrant, defiant, gifted, and embracing. Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (August 21, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312213204
• ISBN-13: 978-0312213206
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,570,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars inspiring chronicle of an inspiring life, December 28, 2001

By 

Liza (DC Metropolitan Area (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?: The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser (Paperback)

I should preface this by telling you that I am fanatically devoted to Muriel Rukeyser's work and so may present a somewhat extreme perspective. As a high-schooler, it is one of my deepest hopes that my generation will awaken to this amazing and underappreciated woman. As Muriel Rukeyser's poems are monuments, so is her life itself. She was a tremendous force for artistic vision and social conscience. As a reflection of such a life, this book could hardly go wrong, and it is indeed intensely thought-provoking and inspiring.

I found the organization of the book to be effective on the whole. Rather than a single narrative, it is a collection of writings from a range of people including Adrienne Rich, and Muriel Rukeyser's son, William Rukeyser. It's divided into five parts: 1. Poetics and Vision; 2. Activism and Teaching; 3. The Body, Feminist Critique, and the Poet as Mother; 4. Poetry of Witness; 5. Remembering Muriel Rukeyser. For the most part the divisions seemed somewhat arbitrary, but of course dividing a life into such categories is a near impossible task. I enjoyed the mix of literary critique with personal stories. There were also a surprisingly large number of poems about/inspired by Muriel Rukeyser, and these were of mixed quality. On the whole, the book admittedly had it's hits and it's misses, but it was absolutely worth it for the hits. I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about Muriel Rukeyser (and that should, of course, be everyone).

5.0 out of 5 stars There is a lot to learn in this portrayal of a Poet, January 11, 2010

By 

BfloBen (Buffalo, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?: The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser (Hardcover)

If you are not that familiar with the work of Muriel Rukeyser (and I am not) you have lots to learn about what you missed. The essays individually portray aspects of the poet and collectively are a beautiful chorus of mixed voices that all share in common a deep reverence for her work and life. I add myself as a late arriving admirer of this formidable artist and activist.