Essays

Fire is as much a tool and a representation of rebirth as it is a force of destruction. Water can represent the same, but also a freedom and a fear of the unknown. After all, who really knows what lurks under dark waters? Nothing in Muriel Rukeyser’s poem sequence “Waterlily Fire,” composed over the span of four years beginning in 1958 and published in 1962, exists in singularity, and the complex relationship she creates between fire and water is testament to that. Rukeyser presents her audience with a piece that opposes male artificiality with female nature, addressing the issue of [...]

“Most demonstrators and marchers did not worry over fine points of strategy; they were simply ‘against the war’” (Bricks and Phelps 141). This sentiment of undirected defiance resonated with the radicalism that emerged in the 1960s protests of the Vietnam War. Even more pertinent, the same sentiments reverberate today. When I was first writing this essay, in the fall of 2019, there had been several protests in Hong Kong throughout the entire year. The citizens of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (HKSAR) were fighting for their democracy, which had been infringed upon by [...]

CHARACTERS MURIEL: Muriel Rukeyser. An activist and poet, Jewish. Begins the play in her mid-thirties. FRIEND 1: A friend of Muriel’s, any gender, Jewish. FRIEND 2: Same as Friend 1. FRIEND 3: An activist friend of Muriel’s, Black, any gender. NEWSCASTER: A radio host, male. PRIME MINISTER: A future nondescript Prime Minister of Israel, male. SCENE 1 A New York City apartment, May 14, 1948.                                                               Morning. A large clock on the wall shows that the time is just past 9 AM. A group of thirtysomethings is huddled around a radio at the kitchen table. The young adults listen intently [...]

6:00 AM The alarm clock begins its song and dance promptly as the time strikes six, ringing out and shaking Marie out of her dreams. She rubs her eyes open, forcing herself up and swinging her legs around and over the side of the bed. The sunlight sneaks its way through the translucent curtains, lighting up Marie’s small apartment with its golden dew, preparing the start of a new day. But first, coffee. After twenty silent minutes of steady caffeine consumption, Marie shuffles from her chair in the kitchen back to her bedroom. She sheds her comfy clothes, replacing them [...]

Perhaps I have become bitter. I have lived in the Palace now for three weeks, and I have begun to learn all of the Princess things. How to walk (apparently, I have been doing it wrong all of these years), how to talk, how to set flower arrangements, how to organize servants, how to organize a banquet, on and on…Still something feels off about all of it. My living here. I know some of the Maids scoff, Madame even found the idea pitiable to begin with.  A servant becoming a Princess. I have heard them talk. A Common orphan becoming [...]