Elisabeth Daumer, Author at Muriel Rukeyser

Locks, Keys, Freedom: Houdini Makes a Comeback in Southeast Michigan

A reminder of the marvelous Houdini Performances in March of 2022 Ladies and Gentlemen—step this way and take your seats. You’re in for an amazing show! Coming to a theatre near you is the legendary escape artist Harry Houdini as imagined by Muriel Rukeyser, a prolific American author and among the most important post-WWII Jewish writers. First performed in 1973, with Christopher Walken as Houdini and Neva Small as Bess, the musical Houdini combines song and dance, comedy and pathos. While capturing Houdini’s transformation from Hungarian-born Eric Weisz, son of a rabbi, to the most celebrated escape artist of all [...]

Elisabeth Daumer2025-03-24T08:46:42+00:00March 24, 2025|Ruke Blog|0 Comments

It Is There

Muriel Rukeyser, from Breaking Open (1973) Yes, it is there, the city full of music, Flute music, sounds of children, voices of poets, The unknown bird in his long call. The bells of peace. Essential peace, it sounds across the water In the long parks where the lovers are walking. Along the lake with its island and pagoda, And a boy learning to fish. His father threads the line. Essential peace, it sounds and it stills. Cockcrow. It is there, the human place. On what does it depend, this music, the children’s games? A long tradition of rest? Meditation? What [...]

Elisabeth Daumer2023-09-04T18:43:57+00:00September 4, 2023|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

From Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser’s Twentieth Century, by Rowena Kennedy Epstein

Introduction Waste/Archives/Feminism Among all the waste there are the intense stories and tellers of stories --Muriel Rukeyser, "Letter to the Front" (1944) In a letter to Denise Levertov in 1965, Muriel Rukeyser writes, "I feel like being fat is a visible sign of my dark side." Levertov responds by qualifying, "You actually give the impression of lioness grandeur, of hugeness, but not of ugly fatness." When I first read this in my early twenties, I was struck by the wicked perniciousness of sexism--that two of the twentieth century's most exciting and radical women poets would spend time talking about their [...]

Elisabeth Daumer2023-09-04T17:01:02+00:00August 22, 2023|Resources|0 Comments

Louise Kertesz, Review of Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser’s Twentieth Century

Rowena Kennedy-Epstein’s Unfinished Spirit, Muriel Rukeyser’s Twentieth Century, is itself a work of bold originality and personal, passionate scholarship. It’s fitting that Rukeyser’s work modeled those qualities when critics were dismissing them as inappropriate, even offensive in a woman writer. In her acknowledgments, K-E professes the deep connection she has forged with her subject: “Writing about Rukeyser has helped me think through our political, humanitarian, and environmental crises and to remain, as she models, a ‘vulgar optimist.’”

Elisabeth Daumer2025-03-26T10:40:49+00:00July 12, 2023|Essays, Scholarship|0 Comments

Wherever

Muriel Rukeyser, from Breaking Open 1973 Wherever we walk we will make Wherever we protest we will go planting Make poems seed grass feed a child growing build a house Whatever we stand against We will stand feeding and seeding Wherever I walk I will make

Elisabeth Daumer2023-09-04T17:03:27+00:00September 9, 2022|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

It Is There

First published in Breaking Open (1973) Yes, it is there, the city full of music, Flute music, sounds of children, voices of poets, The unknown bird in his long call. The bells of peace. Essential peace, it sounds across the water in the long parks where the lovers are walking, Along the lake with its island and pagoda, And a boy learning to fish. His father threads the line. Essential peace, it sounds and it stills. Cockcrow. It is there, the human place. On what does it depend, this music, the children's games? A long tradition of rest? Meditation? What [...]

Elisabeth Daumer2022-08-15T12:26:28+00:00August 15, 2022|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Trudi Witonsky, “Lecture by Mr. Eliot”: Some Context

Published 7/20/2022 The Vassar Encyclopedia's entry on Muriel Rukeyser contains part of a poem, originally published anonymously in the November 1933 issue of Con Spirito. Highly critical of T.S. Eliot, "Lecture by Mr. Eliot" was identified as Rukeyser's by Mary McCarthy, musing over the publication in her memoir, How I Grew: "The Scottsboro Boys. Yes, that sounds like Muriel and the reference would be to a reading by Eliot in Avery [Hall] during our senior year, when he gave us one of the early Possum poems" (260). This remembrance might seem like slim evidence, without available confirmation from any of [...]

Elisabeth Daumer2023-09-04T17:13:49+00:00July 11, 2022|Essays, Scholarship|0 Comments

Houdini Poetry Workshop

The poetry prompts and Poetry Drafting Workshop were developed by David Boeving, an instructor at Eastern Michigan University, in preparation for an YpsiWrites Poetry Wall. The poetry wall was displayed at EMU's Halle Library and at Ypsilanti's Riverside Arts Center, where Rukeyser's play Houdini was performed on Thursday, March 24, 2022. YpsiWrites is a community-focused writing organization which supports writers in the Ypsilanti community through writing-focused workshops, events, resources, and activities. Boeving-Houdini-Poetry-Prompts-1Download Boeving-Houdini-Poetry-Challenge-Drafting-WorkshopDownload

Elisabeth Daumer2022-05-11T14:28:16+00:00May 11, 2022|Pedagogy|0 Comments

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