"Although poet Muriel Rukeyser often provoked a varying critical
response to her work, there was never any doubt during her five-decade
literary career that a resounding passion was on display. Of her first
book, the award-winning collection
Theory of Flight, W. R. Benet remarked in the
Saturday Review of Literature
: "She is a radical politically, but she writes as a poet not a
propagandist. When you hold this book in your hand you hold a living
thing." Some forty-five years later,
Gramercy Review
contributor Jascha Kessler labeled Rukeyser "the heroic, the bardic, the
romantic. . . . Poets who are bardic . . . take on mankind and the
whole cosmos as the field of their utterance, . . . [and] try to carry
whole nations forward through the urgency of their message. . . .
Wherever there are hot spots that journalists blow up on the front
page—strikes, massacres, revolutions, tortures, wars, prisoners and
marches—there is Rukeyser, in the very front line, a spokesperson, or
spokespoet perhaps, speaking up loudly for freedom in the world." Though
her outspoken nature obviously displeased certain critics, Rukeyser
remained a "spokespoet" all of her adult life.
In the critical
commentary on Rukeyser's more than a dozen poetry collections, such
phrases as "social activist" or "poet of social protest" are common.
Alberta Turner explains in the
Dictionary of Literary Biography
that Rukeyser was a native of New York City and "by her own choice her
life was not bland or sheltered." In the 1930s Rukeyser attended Vassar
College and became literary editor of the leftist undergraduate journal
Student Review .
As a reporter for this journal, Rukeyser covered the 1932 Scottsboro
trial in Alabama in which nine black youths were accused of raping two
white girls. According to Wolfgang Saxon in his
New York Times
obituary of Rukeyser, the Scottsboro incident was the basis of
Rukeyser's poem "The Trial" and "may have been the genesis of her
commitment to the cause of the underdog and the unjustly condemned."
Following the Scottsboro trial, Rukeyser moved within very broad social
circles for the remainder of her years. Among other things, she
supported the Spanish Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War; she was
once jailed in Washington for her protest of the Vietnam War; and, as
president of the American Center for PEN, she travelled to South Korea
in the 1970s to rally against the death sentence of poet Kim Chi-Ha, the
incident which later became the framework of one of Rukeyser's last
poems, "The Gates." Since she aligned her creative capacities so closely
with the current events of her day, a number of reviewers believe the
history of the United States for several decades can be culled from
Rukeyser's poetry.
Though frequently incensed by worldly
injustices—as is apparent in both the subject matter and tone of her
writing—Rukeyser had an optimism that at times surprised her critics.
According to Roy B. Hoffman in his
Village Voice review of
The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser,
Rukeyser's distress with injustice was "mingled with a romantic's
belief in the perfectibility of the universe, and a young patriot's
belief in the perfectibility of her nation. . . . Perhaps it is this
belief of Rukeyser's—in a radiant epiphany behind the pain of
conflict—that both dates her and makes her refreshing to read. Her
idealism is unmarked by heavy irony, cynicism, or an intricacy of wit
that characterizes much contemporary poetry." Because of her optimism,
reviewers compared Rukeyser's style to that of nineteenth-century
American poet
Walt Whitman. In an assessment of
Waterlily Fire: Poems, 1935-1962, a
Virginia Quarterly Review
critic explained that "like Whitman, Muriel Rukeyser has so much joy
that it is not to be contained in regular verse but comes out in lines
that are rugged and soaring." In much the same vein,
New York Times Book Review's
Richard Eberhart
judged Rukeyser's poems in general to be "primordial and torrential.
They pour out excitements of a large emotional force, taking in a great
deal of life and giving out profound realizations of the significance of
being. . . . She belongs to the Whitman school of large confrontations
and outpourings."
In opposition to those who appreciated this
poet's ability to merge her outrage with hope, some reviewers considered
Rukeyser's optimism a weakness or a mere posturing. For instance,
Thomas Stumpf in the
Carolina Quarterly found that Rukeyser's later collection
Breaking Open
contains an "indefatigable optimism, hand-clasping brotherhood, and
love for all ethnic groups . . . [which] feed[s] a poetry that is
without muscle. . . . It is poetry that is fatally in love with
exhortations and public promises, with first person posturings." What
Stumpf ultimately detected in this particular collection was "the stuff
of bathos." In turn,
Louise Bogan criticized Rukeyser for creating a world in her poetry that, in reality, "could not last overnight." In her book
Selected Criticism: Prose, Poetry, Bogan described the world in Rukeyser's
A Turning Wind
as "deficient in a sense of human life. . . . Her world is at once too
nightmare and too noble. . . . She does not realize that such a world
could not last overnight, that the sense of injustice is only relevant
when applied to living human beings. . . . [There] is something
hideously oversimplified in crude oppositions and blind idealism." Apart
from complaints such as these, many reviewers fondly supported
Rukeyser's optimism, an optimism grounded in what
Kenneth Rexroth had labeled in a
Los Angeles Times essay "the Community of Love."
In accordance with her impassioned nature, many of Rukeyser's earlier
poems contain an intrepidness and exhortative voice that will surely be
remembered. "Her intense tone, angry but also tender, jubilant, even
exalted, which was to be dominant throughout her career, [was] already
apparent in her first book," stated Turner; in it "she makes little use
of silence." Some critics were inspired by this vigor.
Poetry contributor John Malcolm Brinnin explained that with the publication of
Theory of Flight,
winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, "American poetry found its
first full-blown expression of the rebellious temper that prevailed on
American campuses and among the younger intellectuals. Its success was
immediate. . . . Rukeyser was praised for the ruggedness of her
technique, her experimentalism, and for the powerful utterance which,
from a woman, seemed unique." Other critics could do without her
brashness. "This passionate, innocent young woman . . . talks so noisily
and so hurriedly that it never occurs to her that other people have
seen these things before, and have learned to speak more calmly," wrote
Michael Roberts in his
Spectator review of
Theory of Flight. When Turner remarked in her
Dictionary of Literary Biography essay that Rukeyser would probably
not
be remembered as one of this century's greatest American poets, she
based this statement, at least in part, on her belief that Rukeyser
"wrote too much that was intense but fuzzy, trusting intensity to create
a magic rather than selecting and juxtaposing fresh powerful words or
images. But at times she was able to find the right image." Other
critics of Rukeyser's early collections felt stimulated by her energy
but, like Turner, professed that Rukeyser's methods needed perfecting.
As one
Kirkus Reviews contributor put it, "[Rukeyser] has achieved considerable reputation among those to whom lucidity is not a necessary factor."
Although Rukeyser's early poetic voice tended toward that of a
sloganist, most critics sense that with time Rukeyser was able to
develop greater sophistication and control in her poetry. Whereas
Anne Stevenson commented in her
New York Times Book Review critique of
The Collected Poems
that Rukeyser "seems to have been born poetically full-grown," others
considered various developments in Rukeyser's craft important enough to
analyze in their reviews. Brinnin, for instance, explains that "one of
the most interesting phases of the transformation of the social poet in
years of stress is the change in his use of language. In the case of
Muriel Rukeyser, it moves from that of simple declarative exhortation,
in the common phrases of the city man, to that of a gnarled,
intellectual, almost private observation. In her earlier usage, images
are apt to be simple and few; the whole approach is apt to be through
the medium of urban speech. In the latter work, images become those of
the psychologist, or of the surrealist, charged with meaning and
prevalent everywhere." Albeit, her conviction was still strong, Brinnin
added. Along the same lines, Turner found the later Rukeyser more
relaxed, less rhetorical, "and though the poems still end firmly with
clearly stated, strong opinions, they are less likely to pummel their
readers."
Another change involved the movement toward shorter
poems in contrast to the cluster poems, or collage poems, that were
somewhat of a trademark for Rukeyser, poems centered on a single theme
but developed in "separate, autonomous bits, [and] varied in line length
and stanza form[,] . . . the parts of each book roll[ing] toward the
reader in a series of waves, each of which crashes firmly," explained
Turner. This movement toward more concrete images and shorter poems
coincided rather closely with Rukeyser's increased devotion to the
personal as well as to the political in her poetry.
Even though
Rukeyser would continue to write poems that attempted to "carry whole
nations forward through the urgency of their message," political poetry
was not the be-all and end-all for Rukeyser, who explored a myriad of
topics during her literary career. Many of her poems, particularly after
her first few collections, were very personal, speaking on her role as a
mother and daughter, speaking on sexuality, on creativity, on the
poetic process, speaking also on illness and death. One of her poems
from
The Gates, "Resurrection of the Right Side," details the
human body's slow recovery after a debilitating stroke: "I begin to
climb the mountain on my mouth, / word by stammer, walk stammered, the
lurching deck of earth. / Left-right with none of my own rhythms." In
her book
Beast in View, the poem "Ajanta" is "purportedly" a
poem about painted caves in India, "but when she wrote it," noted
Rexroth, "Muriel had never been to India. . . . 'Ajanta' is an
exploration . . . of her own interior—in every sense. It is the interior
of her mind as a human being, as a poet, and as a woman. It is the
interior of her self as her own flesh. It is her womb." Virginia R.
Terris goes to some length in her
American Poetry Review
article to chronicle Rukeyser's movement from the social to the
personal, or from theory to actual experience. Regarding Rukeyser's
biography of business magnate Wendell Willkie entitled
One Life
and comprised partly of poems, Terris felt Rukeyser was "able to focus
single-mindedly on what she [had] only tentatively explored in earlier
volumes. . . . Although Rukeyser [was] exploring many of the themes she
had earlier explored—family tensions, social and technological issues
and women exploited—she [moved] into experiences that [were] hers
uniquely."
In the same way that Rukeyser's poetry was one of
variety—for it could be labeled many things: romantic, political,
feminist, erotic, Whitmanesque—her oeuvre explored a variety of genres.
Although known particularly for her poetry, Rukeyser wrote biographical
material (which was sometimes in the form of poetry), children's books,
plays, and television scripts, and she also translated poetry from the
Swedish, French, German, Spanish, and Italian. In addition, she taught
and read her poetry at institutions nationwide.
Poetry aside, Rukeyser's biographical work received the most critical attention. As
Jane Cooper noted in the
Washington Post Book World,
Rukeyser "loved science and history and modern technology, enjoying
their puzzles and solvings much as she enjoyed the puzzles and solvings
of poetic form." Thus, the fact that Rukeyser wrote about individuals
other than the literary and artistic should not be too surprising. While
it is true that Rukeyser wrote memorable poems about the German
lithographer Kaethe Kollwitz, American composer Charles Ives, and
mythological figures like Orpheus, at the same time she profiled New
England eccentric Lord Timothy Dexter; nineteenth-century mathematician
Willard Gibbs; English mathematician and scientist Thomas Hariot; and,
as previously noted, lawyer and business executive Wendell Willkie, who
ran for president on the 1940 Republican party ticket. Indeed, Rukeyser
wrote full-length biographies of the latter three men.
According
to Terris, one of Rukeyser's intentions behind writing biographies of
nonliterary persons was to find a meeting place between science and
poetry. In an analysis of Rukeyser's expository work
The Life of Poetry,
Terris notes that Rukeyser was of the opinion that in the West, poetry
and science are wrongly considered to be in opposition to one another.
Thus, writes Terris, "Rukeyser [set] forth her theoretical acceptance of
science . . . [and pointed] out the many parallels between [poetry and
science]—unity within themselves, symbolic language, selectivity, the
use of the imagination in formulating concepts and in execution. Both,
she believe[d], ultimately contribute to one another."
Some
critics were skeptical of this poet's attempts at interpreting history,
but for others Rukeyser's poetic angle brought something more to the
reader than could be expected from a biography in the strict sense.
Regarding Rukeyser's account entitled
The Traces of Thomas Hariot, Washington Post Book World
critic Vincent Cronin stated: "By her carefully controlled imaginative
sympathy, by the dazzling range of her learning, and above all by the
poetry of her style she leads the reader further than he is ever likely
to go into the speculative seventeenth century, where daring men were
trying, on half-a-dozen fronts, to break through into what was to become
the modern world. . . . From now on, thanks to this highly enjoyable
trail-blazing book, Thomas Hariot will never be 'just another minor
Elizabethan.'"
Commonweal reviewer E. L. Keyes viewed Rukeyser's biography of Willard Gibbs as an "intelligible collation of a mountain of mysteries."
Impassioned, self-confident, eclectic, a poet of powerful expression, a
poet of the political and the personal—these and similar phrases have
characterized the life and work of Muriel Rukeyser for decades. Although
the critics in Rukeyser's earlier, more prolific decades seldom agreed
on the value of her achievements, a new generation of reviewers had come
along by the time Rukeyser published
The Collected Poems; and
in looking at the totality of her accomplishments, these critics found
cause for rejoicing. A year before Rukeyser's death, Hoffman concluded
that "poems like 'The Poem as Mask' make me wonder if Muriel Rukeyser is
not our greatest living American poet.
The Collected Poems . .
. enable us to see a breadth of history, energy, and experience rarely
matched in American letters." As for Kessler, "any reading of
[Rukeyser's] poems will excite the best and most ingenious impulses of .
. . people everywhere, who want goodness and freedom and love in the
world and in their own personal lives. Rukeyser remained faithful and
consistent with her own youthful visions, and all this work [in
The Collected Poems]. . . testifies to that."
Two books published after Rukeyser's death attest to a resurgence in her popularity, which waned after 1980. With
Out of Silence: Selected Poems,
new readers were exposed to Rukeyser's poetry and literary historians
were reminded of her contributions. Lee Upton observed in
Belles Lettres:
"The title of the selected poems . . . is particularly appropriate;
Rukeyser . . . , emerging from relative neglect, gives voice to the
repressed, particularly to the lives of women and the marginalized."
According to Anne Herzog of
The Women's Review of Books, Rukeyser "articulated the thoughts and feelings of the unnoticed and excluded" in the poems selected for
Out of Silence.
Rukeyser was "one of this country's most distinguished, misunderstood
and undervalued poets," Herzog added. Of the second book reviving
Rukeyser's prose and poetry,
A Muriel Rukeyser Reader, Richard Gray wrote in
Modern Language Review:
"She has been neglected: but this generous and sensitive selection of
her work will perhaps help redress the balance, introducing her to some
and reminding others how good she can be."
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