Waterlily Fire Archives - The Muriel Rukeyser Living Archive

Elisabeth Däumer, Context for “Waterlily Fire”

By Elisabeth Däumer, Eastern Michigan University Published 2012/05/10 Rukeyser composed this five-part poem over the span of four years (1958-1962) in response to a fire at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, which destroyed two of Monet's Waterlily paintings, one of them an 18-foot long panel attached to the wall in the second-floor gallery. "As the blaze spread, the wall caught on fire, and the painting was almost completely consumed" (Life Magazine 1958, p. 56). Monet's 18-foot long Waterlily Painting destroyed at the Museum of Modern Art on April 15, 1958 Beloved by New Yorkers, the paintings [...]

mthunter222023-09-04T17:14:56+00:00May 10, 2022|Essays, Scholarship|0 Comments

Monet at the Museum of Modern Art

For instructive, beautifully illustrated articles on the acquisition of Monet's Waterlilies by the Museum of Modern Art and their destruction in a fire, see the following articles in Life: “Old Master’s Modern Heirs,” Life December 2, 1957, pp. 94-99. Read this magazine. “Fiery Peril in a Showcase of Modern Art," Life April 28, 1958, 53-56. Read this magazine.

mthunter222019-07-28T17:04:55+00:00December 5, 2018|Resources|0 Comments

Birth of Fragile Orgy (an experimental remix of Muriel Rukeyser)

Performed by Victoria Emanuela Pozyczka, JT Garfield on guitar and Jon Walters on cello. Victoria's commentary:This was a poetry performance at Alexander Hall for Eastern Michigan's Muriel Rukeyser Symposium (March 14, 2013). I was fortunate enough to create a sound poetry piece and perform during the music and poetry event. I'm currently taking the wonderful Christine Hume's "Sound Poetry" graduate course to further my skills as a sound poet. It's been a fantastic experience and I'm very thankful that Christine provided this opportunity for individuals in the class to perform, aka, my wonderful classmates! My performance was in two parts: [...]

mthunter222019-06-11T11:15:57+00:00December 5, 2018|Resources|0 Comments

Waterlily Fire

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Joe Sacksteder Elisabeth Däumer’s post Context for Waterlily Fire rightly points out the theme of interrelatedness that runs through the Living Archive’s featured poem this month. When I first read "Waterlily Fire," I was struck even more by the idea of impermanence and change, which is the actual bridge (to use Rukeyser’s image) that might be relating everything together in this poem. As I wrote in the post Synecdoche, West Virginia, Rukeyser wants her readers to see a kinship between localized disasters, whether it’s the Spanish Civil War or an outbreak of silicosis, and [...]

mthunter222013-02-05T00:20:24+00:00February 5, 2013|Ruke Blog|0 Comments

Thoughts on “Searching/Not Searching: Writing the Biography of Muriel Rukeyser”

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Elisabeth Däumer I just read Kate Daniels' piece "Searching/Not Searching: Writing the Biography of Muriel Rukeyser" (Poetry East 16-17, Spring/Summer 1985, pp. 70-93). It's a great essay! One of the most honest essays I have read about Muriel Rukeyser. Daniels reflects upon the curious desire to write the life of somebody else--what draws us to that task, what is it we are looking for, what do we see, what do we not see, and why. She asserts that "the biographical method is a self-reflexive one, depending as much on the character and experience of [...]

mthunter222012-06-15T12:38:42+00:00June 15, 2012|Ruke Blog|1 Comment

Waterlily Fire

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