Published in Houdini (2002) When you see a woman riding the air Well, you see a woman playing with fire, A woman made of storm and desire And she loves the whole damn zoo. But you can be sure, whatever I do, That I need my beer and bacon too. I wake every night at 4 A.M. And I tell my dreams to the man who is there, Dreams of animals not like him— A woman who rides on fire and air Loves to dream with the whole damn zoo But I need my beer and bacon too. My dreams [...]
Published in Houdini (2002) There are chains— There is freedom— There are keys— And of these, chains are strong Freedom’s endless, keys are great And we Are the greatest of these, The greatest Of these. There are chains— There is freedom— There are keys— And of these, There are those I have seen I have heard And I know I have seen I have heard And I know— There are chains— There is freedom— There are keys-- And the greatest of these Can free the world.
Juvenilia, published in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (2005) Eve walked in the Garden of a Sunday morning, Sunlight was her kirtle and her book a rose— Where was she going, down the aisle of trees so primly? No one knows. Helen in her bower looked into her dressing-glass, (Although of course the mirror was not invented yet,) What did she think as she preened herself for Paris? The songs forget. Vivien was subtle by the age-old oak tree, But that Merlin the enchanter was her dupe, I doubt, What did she do when he loosed the magic bondage? [...]
Published in The Gates (1976) When this hand is gone to earth, this writing hand and the paper beneath it, long gone, and the words on the paper forgotten, and the breath that slowly curls around earth with its old spoken words gone into lives unborn and they too gone to earth— and their memory, memory of any of these gone, and all who remembered them absorbed in air and dirt, words, earth, breeze over the oceans, all these now other, there may as in the past be something left, some artifact. This pen. Will it tell my? [...]
Published in Houdini (2002) I make my magic Of forgotten things Night and nightmare and the midnight wings Of childhood butterflies— And the darkness, the straining dark Underwater and under sleep— Night and a heartbreak try to keep Myself, until before my eyes The morning sunlight pours And I am clear of all the chains And the magic now that rains Down around me is A sunlight magic, I come to a sunlight magic, Yours.
Preface Muriel Rukeyser's Elegies challenges readers with an array of complicated literary devices and historical references as a way of digesting a thoroughly grueling time in world history, as she lived through it. Since the work isn't reflecting on the past, but rather a historical present, Elegies stands as especially relevant for readers experiencing unprecedented times. Even as one of those readers, I still had a lot of difficulty interpreting Rukeyser's ambitious collection. As that's the case, I wanted to emulate her as a way of understanding the work. If I can at least reconstruct how these elegies were written, [...]
Dennis: It’s a pleasure and an honor to welcome William L. Rukeyser, son of the late poet and biographer, Muriel Rukeyser, who we are honoring, studying, remembering, during this extended two-day webinar at Eastern Michigan University. Eastern Michigan University is creating an archive for the great work of the biographer and poetry of Muriel Rukeyser. And her son, William, has agreed to talk a little bit about his mom and what it’s like to grow up as the son of a great poet and a visionary. Dennis: So, welcome, William Rukeyser, to “Flashpoints”, and it is very good to have [...]
There’s a line in Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Käthe Kollwitz” next to which I write: this, the center of everything. That line, from the five-part poem’s second section, reads: “A woman pouring her opposites.” The poem is better-known for a question that Rukeyser later asks, then immediately answers: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open” (Muriel Rukeyser Reader 214, part 3, lines 25-26). These might well be Rukeyser’s most-quoted lines; they appear in some form as countless epigraphs, as the title of at least two anthologies, and in the pages [...]
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