Muriel Rukeyser Criticism
Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) was a multifaceted American writer whose extensive body of work spans poetry, novels, plays, biographies, screenwriting, translations, and children's literature. Often celebrated as one of the most inventive and challenging poets of her generation, Rukeyser's contributions to modern American literature are marked by her unflinching exploration of social and political injustices, as well as her integration of personal experience with documentary evidence. Her early works, such as Theory of Flight — which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1935 — and U.S. 1, addressed historic events like the Scottsboro trial and the Spanish Civil War, employing a documentary style akin to the proletarian novel. This approach was praised by figures such as William Carlos Williams. As her style evolved, Rukeyser began incorporating surreal and mythic elements, which added a deeper personal dimension to her poetry, as seen in later collections like The Speed of Darkness and Breaking Open, discussed by Richard Eberhart.
Despite varying critical responses to her work, Rukeyser's poetry is noted for its passionate engagement with both political and personal themes. While some of her radical visions were dismissed as simplistic, her relentless pursuit of clarity and sincerity, particularly in her later works, garnered praise from critics such as Hayden Carruth. Rukeyser's ability to blend social realism with visionary insights earned her comparisons to Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda, as noted by Anne Stevenson, and her expansive style was often aligned with the Whitman tradition by critics like John Malcolm Brinnin. Her work's enduring appeal lies in its capacity to inspire feminist and pacifist writers, as observed by Adrienne Rich, and its exploration of myth and consciousness is highlighted by Rachel Blau DuPlessis.
Rukeyser's poetry transformed over the years from impersonal political commentary to a more introspective exploration of both social and personal realms, reflecting her poetic maturity and personal philosophy. Her use of dialogue, narrative, lists, and vivid imagery, as identified by Elizabeth Sewell, underscores her unique method of blending thematic concerns with an enduring poetic power. Victor Howes describes her voice as both commanding and prophetic, placing her among the ranks of confessional and socially engaged poets. Meanwhile, Jascha Kessler draws attention to her "bardic" style, despite certain limitations in her global outlook. Renowned for her capacity to merge personal experiences with broader cultural concerns, Rukeyser's poetry demands a unique openness from readers, as William Meredith argues. Her collection The Gates is acclaimed for its compassionate treatment of prejudice and justice, as discussed by Robert Coles, further solidifying her legacy as a profound and challenging voice in American literature.
Contents
- Principal Works
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Rukeyser, Muriel (Vol. 15)
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America Was Promises
(summary)
In the following essay, Louise Bogan critiques Muriel Rukeyser's work for being overly focused on social issues to the detriment of personal expression, suggesting that her poetry lacks a sense of human vitality and humor, which she believes are necessary to balance her earnest and noble themes.
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A Ribbon of Images
(summary)
In the following essay, Jane Cooper explores the enduring and evolving significance of Muriel Rukeyser's poetic work, emphasizing its interconnected themes of discovery, political engagement, and faith, while arguing that Rukeyser's expansive style and openness to inner experience were misunderstood and undervalued during particular historical periods.
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With Head and Heart
(summary)
In the following essay, Anne Stevenson praises Muriel Rukeyser as an essential American poet whose work combines social realism with visionary awareness, comparing her to Whitman and Neruda, and emphasizes her ability to blend documentary style with passionate empathy while maintaining a poetic voice rooted in heart and humanity.
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Review of Muriel Rukeyser, 'Collected Poems'
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In the following essay, Harry Marten argues that the diversity and intensity found in Muriel Rukeyser's Collected Poems reflect her ability to capture the complexities and human dimensions of modern life, likening her work to her literary influences, Melville and Whitman, in its exploration of "truths of outrage and possibility."
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Rukeyser: A Presence in the Lines
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In the following essay, Victor Howes portrays Muriel Rukeyser as a powerful and prophetic poetic force, emphasizing her commanding presence and the vigorous, direct nature of her verse, which aligns her with confessional and socially protest-oriented poets, likening her to a poetic Joan of Arc.
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Reflection in a Dark Mirror
(summary)
In the following essay, Elizabeth Sewell examines Muriel Rukeyser's poetry, highlighting the unique blend of thematic preoccupations with science, politics, and the self, and identifying a "fourfold method"—dialogue, narrative, lists, and vivid imagery—as central to understanding Rukeyser's innovation and the enduring power of her work.
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The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser
(summary)
In the following essay, Jascha Kessler examines the remarkable consistency and diversity of Muriel Rukeyser's poetry, highlighting her bardic and heroic style, while acknowledging her limitations in addressing global injustices, particularly her silence on Soviet oppression, yet praising her generous spirit and lasting impact on young readers.
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America Was Promises
(summary)
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Rukeyser, Muriel (Vol. 10)
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Sue Ann Alderson
(summary)
In the following essay, Sue Ann Alderson examines Muriel Rukeyser's Breaking Open as an exploration of life and positive affirmation through abstract diction and unadorned imagery, emphasizing universal themes of touch, transformation, and creativity, often linked to her personal experiences and intellectual heritage.
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A Life of Poetry
(summary)
In the following essay, William Meredith argues that Muriel Rukeyser's poetry, deeply entwined with her personal experiences and fears, demands a unique openness from readers to fully appreciate its commitment to freedom and truth.
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Muriel Ruckeyser's 'The Gates'
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In the following essay, Robert Coles praises Muriel Rukeyser's volume "The Gates" for its compassionate exploration of themes such as prejudice, historical awareness, and the struggle for justice, highlighting her ability to maintain humility and a humanitarian vision in her poetic approach.
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Sue Ann Alderson
(summary)
- Rukeyser, Muriel (Vol. 6)
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Rukeyser, Muriel (Vol. 27)
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Youth in Protest
(summary)
In the following essay, Harold Rosenberg commends Muriel Rukeyser's debut work, Theory of Flight, for its technical prowess and thematic exploration of urban life and social issues, suggesting that while her Marxist-influenced poetry is mature in scope, it requires a more refined aesthetic focus to reconcile its inherent contradictions.
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The Language of Muriel Rukeyser
(summary)
In the following essay, Louis Untermeyer argues that Muriel Rukeyser's poetry, characterized by its provocative language and daring ideas, represents a synthesis of complex symbols and themes, reflecting her generation's struggle with modernity, as evidenced in works like "Theory of Flight" and "The Soul and Body of John Brown."
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Muriel Rukeyser: The Social Poet and the Problem of Communication
(summary)
In the following essay, John Malcolm Brinnin examines Muriel Rukeyser's poetry, highlighting her evolution from simple, politically infused language to more complex, introspective forms, and discusses the tension between her political convictions and artistic expression as she navigates the challenges faced by social poets in balancing communication with literary innovation.
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Ladies' Day
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In the following essay, Oscar Williams argues that Muriel Rukeyser's Beast in View is her best work, particularly highlighting "Ajanta" as a significant poem of the decade, despite critiquing her tendency for excessive material and lack of form unity in other poems.
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Invigoration and a Brilliant Hope
(summary)
In the following essay, James R. Caldwell argues that Muriel Rukeyser's works, particularly "The Life of Poetry," "Elegies," and "Orpheus," embody a radical integration of life and art through a dialectical process, depicting poetry as an emotional and dynamic response to the world, although her recent works may seem overly energetic and hurried.
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Poetic Responses
(summary)
In the following essay, Kenneth Rexroth argues that Muriel Rukeyser's poetry is characterized by an organic awareness and philosophical depth, distinguishing her as a mature and assured poet whose work embodies responses rather than reactions, eschewing direct messages or rhetoric for a profound interconnectedness of life's processes.
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American Poets: 'What Language Can Accomplish'
(summary)
In the following essay, Colin Campbell argues that Muriel Rukeyser's poetry, spanning over two decades, exemplifies the essential role of poets as commentators on American experience, while her innovative techniques address the challenges facing modern poetry's accessibility and its survival in a rapidly evolving world.
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Poetry of Three Women
(summary)
In the following essay, May Swenson explores Muriel Rukeyser's expansive, empathetic, and innovative poetic voice, celebrating her works' themes of science, humanity, and social consciousness, while highlighting her mastery of both sweeping canvases and precise lyrical poems, as exemplified in her collection Waterlily Fire.
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Three Days Off for Puck
(summary)
In the following essay, Helen Merrell Lynd explores Muriel Rukeyser's The Orgy, emphasizing its resistance to conventional classification and its vivid depiction of perception, while praising the narrative's capacity to transform readers' understanding of ordinary terms and experiences.
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Personal Statement
(summary)
In the following essay, Richard Eberhart argues that Muriel Rukeyser's poetry embodies a primordial and torrential emotional force, characterized by powerful personal expression and a unique style that aligns with the Whitman tradition, offering expansive insights into life without being confessional or dogmatic.
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Muriel Rukeyser
(summary)
In the following essay, Laurence Lieberman critiques Muriel Rukeyser's poetry for its mystical tendencies and excessive symbolism, while praising her narrative and biographical poems for their straightforwardness and emotional depth, particularly highlighting her portrayal of the artist Käthe Kollwitz as a testament to her ability to convey universal human experiences.
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Muriel Rukeyser: A Retrospective
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In the following essay, Virginia R. Terris explores how Muriel Rukeyser's poetry, deeply rooted in the Whitman-Transcendental tradition, evolves from mechanistic metaphors to a profound engagement with the self, reflecting an ongoing struggle with themes of identity, silence, and integration in both personal and social contexts.
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The Critique of Consciousness and Myth in Levertov, Rich, and Rukeyser
(summary)
In the following essay, Rachel Blau DuPlessis explores Muriel Rukeyser's poetry as a profound critique of cultural norms, focusing on the transformative power of myth, individual consciousness, and social change, and examines how Rukeyser's works challenge traditional ideologies through a feminist lens, emphasizing the connection between personal and historical transformation.
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The Poetic Vision of Muriel Rukeyser
(summary)
In the following essay, Kenneth Rexroth argues that Muriel Rukeyser stands out as the most profound poet of her generation, emphasizing her unique commitment to liberty and community, her exploration of power, and her deep introspective poetry, distinguishing her from both her contemporaries and predecessors.
- John Tagliabue
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Youth in Protest
(summary)
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Rukeyser, Muriel
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Theory of Flight
(summary)
Lechlitner is an American poet and critic. In the following review, she provides a mixed assessment of Theory of Flight. Muriel Rukeyser's poems are as a collection the most outstanding to be published within the last decade by a younger woman poet. And from a critical viewpoint, Theory of Flight should be of special significance to anyone interested in the advancement of modern poetry.
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Muriel Rukeyser's US 1
(summary)
Williams was one of America's most renowned poets of the twentieth century. Rejecting, as overly academic, the Modernist poetic style established by T. S. Eliot, he sought a more natural poetic expression, endeavouring to replicate the idiomatic cadences of American speech. In the following review of U.S. 1, he praises Rukeyser's use of documentary evidence in her political poems.
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A review of The Green Waves
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In the following review, he objects to the emotional rhetoric in The Green Wave, criticizing Muriel Rukeyser's work for its melodramatic style and lack of substance compared to her earlier poem 'Ajanta.'
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Muriel Rukeyser: The Longer Poems
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In this excerpt from the first major essay on Rukeyser, he discusses the predominant themes of her early poems "Theory of Flight," "The Book of the Dead," Elegies, and Orpheus.
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The Closest Permissible Approximation
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In the following mixed review of Waterlily Fire: Poems 1935–1962, Carruth notes Rukeyser's ineffective use of language but commends her honest treatment of spiritual and moral issues.
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Personal Statement
(summary)
An American educator and playwright, Eberhart is considered by many critics and readers to be one of the major lyric poets of this century. In the following review of The Speed of Darkness, he commends the passionate and deeply personal nature of Rukeyser's work.
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Muriel Rukeyser—Before and Beyond Postmodernism
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Kertesz is an American critic and educator. In the following excerpt, she compares Rukeyser's poetry to the work of several postmodern and contemporary poets.
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Finding Her Voice: Muriel Rukeyser's Poetic Development
(summary)
In the following essay, Barber traces the development of Rukeyser's poetic voice.
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The Demise of the 'Delicate Prisons': The Women's Movement in Twentieth-Century American Poetry
(summary)
In the following excerpt, which was originally published in the Cimarron Review in Summer, 1990, she identifies several feminist themes that have characterized Rukeyser's work and have made her a central figure in the women's movement in American poetry during the 1960s and 1970s.
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The Letter and the Body: Muriel Rukeyser's 'Letter to the Front'
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Schweik contends that 'Letter to the Front' 'self-consciously confronts and reenvisions conventions of both war poetry and love poetry.'
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An introduction to A Muriel Rukeyser Reader
(summary)
Rich is regarded as among the best of contemporary American poets. Her early poetry is praised for its stylistic control and restraint of individuality, while her later work is characterized by a thorough shift to personal, political, and feminist themes, and to experimental styles. Rich's poetry, considered by Hayden Carruth exemplary of a new aesthetic, is rooted in an existential view of the human condition and of the poet as self-creator. As a critic, Rich provides a strongly feminist perspective. In the following essay, she provides an overview of the major themes of Rukeyser's poetry.
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Theory of Flight
(summary)
- Further Reading