Writings

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) "You are not pregnant," said the man with the probe and the white white coat; "Yes she is," said all the little animals. Then the great gynecologist examined. "You are not now, and I doubt that you ever have been," he said with authority. "Test me again." He looked at his nurse and shrugged. "Yes she is," said all the little animals, and laid down their lives for my son and me. Twenty-one years later, my son a grown man and far away at the other ocean, I hear them  :   "Yes you [...]

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the roads.       He smelled a familiar smell.       It was the Sphinx.       Oedipus said, “I want to ask one question. Why didn’t I recognize my mother?”        “You gave the wrong answer,” said the Sphinx.      “But that was what made everything possible,” said Oedipus.     “No,” she said. “When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered, Man.      You didn’t [...]

Originally published in Theory of Flight (1935) :Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now? I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing. When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair : a pink rabbit : it was my birthday, and a candle burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy. :Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open: Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like [...]

J. Willard Gibbs (1839–1903) was an American scientist who spent most of his professional life at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He made award-winning contributions to the fields of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, as well as pioneering statistical mechanics. Rukeyser was deeply fascinated by Gibbs and published a biography in which she calls him a "source of power." "Gibbs" was originally published in A Turning Wind (1939) It was much later in his life he rose in the professors' room, the frail bones rising among that fume of mathematical meaning, symbols, the language of symbols, literature...threw air, simple life, [...]

Originally published in A Turning Wind (1939) It was much later in his life he rose in the professors' room, the frail bones rising among that fume of mathematical meaning, symbols, the language of symbols, literature . . . threw air, simple life, in the dead lungs of their meeting, said, "Mathematics is a language." Withdrew. Into a silent world beyond New Haven, the street-fights gone, the long youth of undergraduate riots down Church Street, initiation violence, secret societies gone : a broken-glass isolation, bottles smashed flat, windows out, street-fronts broken : to quiet, the little portico, wrought-iron and shutters' [...]

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) I lie in the bath and I contemplate the toilet-paper: Scottissue, 1000 sheets—         What a lot of pissin and shittin         What a lot of pissin and shittin Enough for the poems of Shelley and Keats— All the poems of Shelley and Keats.     (c) Muriel Rukeyser

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) In the night the sound woke us. We went up to the deck. Brightness of brightness in the black night. The ship standing still, her hold wide open. Light shining orange on the lumber her cargo, fresh strong-smelling wood. A tall elder sailor standing at the winches, his arms still, down; not seeming to move, his hands hidden behind black leather balcony. The silver-hair tall sailor, stern and serene his face turning from side to side. The winches fell and rose with the newborn wood. Orange and blazing in the lights it rose. Vancouver [...]

Originally published in Theory of Flight (1935)           1 Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry    : Not Angles, angels    :     and the magnificent past shot deep illuminations into high-school. I opened the door into the concert-hall and a rush of triumphant violins answered me while the syphilitic woman turned her mouldered face intruding upon Brahms.         Suddenly, in an accident the girl's brother was killed, but her father had just died    : she stood against the wall, leaning her cheek, dumbly her arms fell, "What will become of me?"    and I went into the corridor for a drink of water. These [...]