Scholarship

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 [...]

Presented at the 2013 Muriel Rukeyser Centenary Symposium, March 14-16, 2013, Eastern Michigan University Rukeyser’s Book of the Dead is a voice to the voiceless, a poem that seeks to give power to those devastatingly affected by the Hawk’s Nest Incident. In order to do so, it must not turn away from or fail to remind us of the power that they were up against, that they fell victim to. For the poem is also a sobering reminder not only of the danger of corruption, but also the potential hazard of blindly accepting the value of what one may consider [...]

Presented at the 2013 Muriel Rukeyser Centenary Symposium, March 14-16, 2013, Eastern Michigan University As we discuss the iterations of power revealed in Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead,” I think it is important to consider the power that the poem itself represents. That is, Muriel Rukeyser’s authorial power. In Rukeyser’s documentary Poem of Witness we find that she incorporates real people and their actual testimonies. While this is a fantastic way to give a voice to the subjugated victims of the disaster at Hawk’s Nest Tunnel; I wonder whether the artistic liberty Rukeyser takes with the words of [...]

Presented at the 2013 Muriel Rukeyser Centenary Symposium, March 14-16, 2013, Eastern Michigan University Muriel Rukeyser constructs women as sources of power in The Book of the Dead.1 The prominent female voices in the poem come from two women, Philippa Allen and Mrs. Jones. Both Philippa Allen and Mrs. Jones were actual women who were involved in the fallout from the disaster at Gauley Bridge. These two women are implicated in this event through both history and Rukeyser’s poem. The third poem “Statement: Philippa Allen” is drawn entirely from the transcript of Philippa Allen’s testimony at the hearing before the [...]

Presented at the 2013 Muriel Rukeyser Centenary Symposium, March 14-16, 2013, Eastern Michigan University The Book of the Dead explores the corruption of the body that echoes the corruption of the land as humans attempt to harness power and take control of the natural world. However, another corruption shows itself when we meet Dr. Goldwater, brought in to testify at the hearing. My first reading of the poem took place in a near void of knowledge regarding the Hawks Nest disaster, and I didn’t see that Dr. Goldwater is on the Union Carbide payroll, compensated for his testimony; all I [...]

Alicia Ostriker's Keynote Speech at the Muriel Rukeyser Centenary Symposium, March 16, 2013. There are... two kinds of reaching in poetry, one based on the document, the evidence itself; the other informed by the unverifiable fact, as in sex, dream, the parts of life in which we dive deep and sometimes—with strength of expression and skill and luck—reach that place where things are shared and we all recognize the secrets. (Jane Cooper, How shall we tell Each Other of the Poet, p. 6) Unverifiable fact...the parts of life where we dive deep. I cherish this quote, this image. For I [...]