Scholarship

In “Dream Drumming,” an interview with Pearl London from February 22, 1978, Muriel Rukeyser responds to the “processes of craft,” providing a provocative and telling explanation of what she felt was the most important aspect of poetry writing: It’s very hard to talk about the rewriting that goes into [poems] because the major rewriting is likely to be in the matter of sound, the sound that is deep in the structure, almost a crystalline structure of sound in the poem. (28-29) Sound is both pronounced and buried in Rukeyser’s poetry, initiating multiple conversations yet begging to be revealed. When reading [...]

May 29, 1909: "Betzabel" (later Charles) Naginski is born in Cairo, Egypt, where there is a substantial community of East European Jewish immigrants who benefit from the comparative liberality of the Sultan's regime. His parents, Abraham and Nahema Naginsky, speak Yiddish at home. As a child, Betzabel studies piano with his father and begins composing at an early age. 1925: Abraham and Nahema Naginsky emigrate to the U. S. with their children, but Betzabel remains in Egypt, perhaps to finish his education. March 30, 1927: "Betzabel Naginsky," age seventeen, "an artist," emigrates to New York City from Alexandria, Egypt. He [...]

This essay is, in itself, evidence of a slight derangement in my scholarly life: I am obsessed with two lines by Muriel Rukeyser. I will explore the connections suggested by those lines and the complex ways Rukeyser grapples with gender, history, and mythology in her poetry. Those two lines are, in fact, a whole poem. Here it is: Not to Be Printed, Not to Be Said, Not to Be Thought I’d rather be Muriel than be dead and be Ariel. (Collected Poems 554) Ariel, of course, is the title of the posthumous book that made Sylvia Plath’s name as a [...]

I did some thirty years of living before encountering the work of Muriel Rukeyser. I don’t remember the exact day when I came upon this subversive Jewish-American poet, but my affinity to her is so strong that I think of her as “Muriel,” as opposed to the more formal “Rukeyser.” She was a pioneering poet, as well as a key influence on such writers as Alice Walker, Adrienne Rich, Erica Jong, Sharon Olds, Denise Levertov, Gerald Stern, Marge Piercy, and Alicia Ostriker. Yet, owing to her gender (female), her political engagement (she was an outspoken socialist), her innovations in diction, [...]

Thoughts prepared for 1913 MLA Special Session: Muriel Rukeyser at One Hundred “There is no substitute for Critical Tradition: A continuum of understanding, early commenced,” Hugh Kenner observed, when he compared the reception of Eliot’s and Pound’s work. When The Waste Land appeared in 1922, readers responded immediately; the first generation of Canto readers, by contrast, were not yet born when the first cantos were published; the deferral in response created what Kenner described as the paradox of “an intensely topical poem [becoming] archaic without ever having been contemporary” (415). It may seem outlandish to begin a talk on Rukeyser [...]

Introduction to the Journal of Narrative Theory Special Issue on Muriel Rukeyser, 43.4 (Fall 2013): 247-257. Muriel Rukeyser was presumptuous. Her presumptions were multifold and risky. They involved contentious claims for poetry’s many “uses”—emotional, intellectual, and cultural; for its kinship with science, particularly “abstract science”; and for its value as “meeting place,” capable of linking not only different people, but also highly specialized disciplines and epistemologies in a common imaginative pursuit (Life of Poetry 103,159, 20).[1]For those of us coming to her work today, Rukeyser’s presumptions are a blessing. For one, she insisted on the necessity of audacity for the [...]

Presented at the 2013 Muriel Rukeyser Centenary Conference, March 14-16, 2013 © Photo by Amy HildrethMuriel Rukeyser’s only monograph-length travelogue, The Orgy (1965), depicts Puck Fair, an annual festival held in rural Killorglin, County Kerry, Ireland. The largest of Ireland’s annual horse and cattle festivals, Puck is celebrated from August 10 through 12 and is marketed as "Ireland's Oldest Fair.” Puck centers on the display of a goat crowned “the only King of Ireland” by the Queen of the Fair, a sixth grade girl from the local school. Following his coronation, King Puck is lifted onto the top of a [...]