mthunter22

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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 “meeting place,” capable of linking not only different people, but also highly specialized disciplines and epistemologies in a common imaginative pursuit (Life of Poetry 103,159, 20).[1]For those of us coming to her work today, Rukeyser’s presumptions are a blessing. For one, she insisted on the necessity of audacity for the [...]

2023-09-04T20:26:42+00:00December 5, 2013|Essays, Scholarship|0 Comments

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 10 through 12 and is marketed as "Ireland's Oldest Fair.” Puck centers on the display of a goat crowned “the only King of Ireland” by the Queen of the Fair, a sixth grade girl from the local school. Following his coronation, King Puck is lifted onto the top of a [...]

2023-09-04T20:35:00+00:00October 5, 2013|Essays, Scholarship|0 Comments

Crisis, hope, and the life of poetry

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Catherine Gander I’m delighted to be blogging for this website for several reasons. Foremost among them is the great pleasure I have in being part of a growing community of scholars, students, readers, writers, artists, musicians, performers, filmmakers, activists and more who share a deep, inclusive appreciation for the life and legacy of Muriel Rukeyser. My first exposure to Rukeyser’s work was not to her poetry, but to her poetic philosophy. In a Master’s class at King’s College London, I had been assigned to read The Life of Poetry by someone who had once [...]

2013-10-03T14:33:48+00:00October 3, 2013|Ruke Blog|1 Comment

From the Shaky Isles

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Marian Evans ISLANDS O for God's sake they are connected underneath They look at each other across the glittering sea some keep a low profile Some are cliffs The bathers think islands are separate like them I feel so fortunate. I've heard gifted readers read the second draft of the Throat of These Hours radio play. And I know what I'd like to do and what I have to do, to ensure it's ready to submit to Radio New Zealand at the beginning of October. This week, I'll write the third draft. And up the coast composer Christine White [...]

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 away from or fail to remind us of the power that they were up against, that they fell victim to. For the poem is also a sobering reminder not only of the danger of corruption, but also the potential hazard of blindly accepting the value of what one may consider [...]

2023-09-04T20:41:28+00:00August 14, 2013|Essays, Scholarship|0 Comments

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. In Rukeyser’s documentary Poem of Witness we find that she incorporates real people and their actual testimonies. While this is a fantastic way to give a voice to the subjugated victims of the disaster at Hawk’s Nest Tunnel; I wonder whether the artistic liberty Rukeyser takes with the words of [...]

2023-09-04T20:39:54+00:00August 14, 2013|Essays, Scholarship|0 Comments

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 were actual women who were involved in the fallout from the disaster at Gauley Bridge. These two women are implicated in this event through both history and Rukeyser’s poem. The third poem “Statement: Philippa Allen” is drawn entirely from the transcript of Philippa Allen’s testimony at the hearing before the [...]

2023-09-04T20:43:22+00:00August 14, 2013|Essays, Scholarship|0 Comments

Throat Of These Hours: Muriel Rukeyser, Verifiable & Unverifiable

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Marian Evans THEN When I am dead, even then, I will still love you, I will wait in these poems, When I am dead, even then I am still listening to you. I will be still making poems for you out of silence; silence will be falling into that silence, it is building music. ‘Why aren’t you talking with people who knew Muriel Rukeyser?’ a poet friend asks me. I explain. As a history graduate, an oral historian, a librarian, a lawyer and documentary maker of course I’m tempted to interview all of you [...]

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