Ruke Blog Archives - Page 3 of 4

Marian Evans, From the Shaky Isles

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Marian Evans ISLANDS O for God's sake they are connected underneath They look at each other across the glittering sea some keep a low profile Some are cliffs The bathers think islands are separate like them I feel so fortunate. I've heard gifted readers read the second draft of the Throat of These Hours radio play. And I know what I'd like to do and what I have to do, to ensure it's ready to submit to Radio New Zealand at the beginning of October. This week, I'll write the third draft. And up the coast composer Christine White [...]

mthunter222025-06-06T15:27:26+00:00August 22, 2013|Ruke Blog, Throat of These Hours (play)|2 Comments

Marian Evans, Throat Of These Hours: Muriel Rukeyser, Verifiable & Unverifiable

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Marian Evans THEN When I am dead, even then, I will still love you, I will wait in these poems, When I am dead, even then I am still listening to you. I will be still making poems for you out of silence; silence will be falling into that silence, it is building music. ‘Why aren’t you talking with people who knew Muriel Rukeyser?’ a poet friend asks me. I explain. As a history graduate, an oral historian, a librarian, a lawyer and documentary maker of course I’m tempted to interview all of you [...]

mthunter222025-06-06T15:39:04+00:00July 19, 2013|Ruke Blog, Throat of These Hours (play)|0 Comments

Marian Evans, Throat of These Hours

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Marian Evans from The Speed of Darkness 13 My night awake staring at the broad rough jewel the copper roof across the way thinking of the poet yet unborn in this dark who will be the throat of these hours. No. Of those hours. Who will speak these days, if not I, if not you? Throat of These Hours is two plays, one for stage and one for radio. Both now in second draft, they have long-ago beginnings, when a lover gave me a photocopy of The Speed of Darkness. I don’t [...]

mthunter222025-06-06T15:38:07+00:00June 6, 2013|Ruke Blog|4 Comments

Waterlily Fire

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Joe Sacksteder Elisabeth Däumer’s post Context for Waterlily Fire rightly points out the theme of interrelatedness that runs through the Living Archive’s featured poem this month. When I first read "Waterlily Fire," I was struck even more by the idea of impermanence and change, which is the actual bridge (to use Rukeyser’s image) that might be relating everything together in this poem. As I wrote in the post Synecdoche, West Virginia, Rukeyser wants her readers to see a kinship between localized disasters, whether it’s the Spanish Civil War or an outbreak of silicosis, and [...]

mthunter222013-02-05T00:20:24+00:00February 5, 2013|Ruke Blog|0 Comments

The Brilliant Truth, Rukeyser vs. Oprah

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Joe Sacksteder Against all sage advice from my colleagues, I’m thinking about proposing a class. I want to call it “True Lies: Untruth in Nonfiction,” a creative writing class that explores the gray area that Elisabeth called attention to in my last post: the various ways that artists define truth. The first thing that comes to mind is James Frey’s Oprah-enraging “memoir,” A Million Little Pieces. What I’m more concerned with, though, is the unflinching, unapologetic notion of how we can make stuff up and claim that it’s somehow truer than what actually happened. [...]

mthunter222013-01-14T20:38:04+00:00January 14, 2013|Ruke Blog|1 Comment

Synecdoche, Minnesota

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Joe Sacksteder My bio on the homepage for “Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive” states that I just completed a novel partly inspired by The Book of the Dead, and I wanted to use this post to relate how Rukeyser’s poetry has influenced my creative work. Back in undergrad at St. John’s University, I was lucky enough to be able to do volunteer work at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in St. Cloud, an institution with a very unique history. Most of my initial knowledge was word-of-mouth, and it disturbed me in a gut-level way that [...]

mthunter222012-12-14T23:39:04+00:00December 14, 2012|Ruke Blog|3 Comments

Dear The Objective Correlative,

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Joe Sacksteder I admit it: I don’t understand you. But it’s not that I haven’t tried. I Google your name to see what you’re up to these days. At faculty parties I have a few too many Two-Hearteds and then beg my colleagues to tell me if they’ve seen you recently. I consider editing your Wikipedia page, and it kills me to know that there are others who are far more qualified. I try to remember those days back in undergrad when we were so bold and carefree. Remember how we used to make [...]

mthunter222012-12-01T01:01:52+00:00December 1, 2012|Ruke Blog|1 Comment

Muriel Rukeyser, Zombie Necromancer

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Joe Sacksteder I don’t care for this new zombie renaissance. And I don’t mean that like I’m afraid of zombies or something. I just think that 1). it’s a default subject matter for horror writers, 2). all interesting scenarios and subject matters were long ago exhausted, and 3). our current fascination with the genre points to disturbing cultural predilections. So I was surprised when reading a new compilation put out by Butler University’s Pressgang Press, Monsters: A Collection of Literary Sightings, that my favorite story was Amiee Bender’s Among Us. Briefly, it starts as [...]

mthunter222012-11-23T22:27:20+00:00November 23, 2012|Ruke Blog|0 Comments

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