Dara Barnat: Finding Muriel
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.” [...]
Elisabeth Däumer: A Muriel Rukeyser Website–Creating an Accessible Critical Tradition
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 [...]
Elisabeth Däumer: Muriel Rukeyser’s Presumptions
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 [...]
Amy Hildreth Chen, Context for The Orgy
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 [...]
Trevor Snyder: Challenging Expert Authority
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 [...]
Kyle Evans: Muriel Rukeyser and Authorial Power in “The Book of the Dead”
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. [...]
Kellie Nadler: Constructing Women as Sources of Power in “The Book of the Dead”
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 [...]
Alice Thomsen: In Defense of the Doctors
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 [...]
Alicia Ostriker: Learning to Breathe Under Water
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 [...]
Chelsea Lonsdale: The Poem as Meeting Place
Witness, Fear, and Conversation in the Poetry of Muriel Rukeyser By Chelsea Lonsdale If the poem is a meeting place, it cannot be dismantled into disciplines. It cannot be disassembled into individual parts that, on their own, are worth more or less than what is possible when they combine. Poetry [...]
