Throat of These Hours

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Marian Evans   from The Speed of Darkness 13 My night awake staring at the broad rough jewel the copper roof across the way thinking of the poet yet unborn in this dark who will be the throat of these hours. No.    Of [...]

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, [...]

The Brilliant Truth, Rukeyser vs. Oprah

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Joe Sacksteder Against all sage advice from my colleagues, I’m thinking about proposing a class. I want to call it “True Lies: Untruth in Nonfiction,” a creative writing class that explores the gray area that Elisabeth called attention to in my last post: the [...]

Synecdoche, Minnesota

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Joe Sacksteder My bio on the homepage for “Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive” states that I just completed a novel partly inspired by The Book of the Dead, and I wanted to use this post to relate how Rukeyser’s poetry has influenced my creative [...]

Dear The Objective Correlative,

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Joe Sacksteder I admit it: I don’t understand you. But it’s not that I haven’t tried. I Google your name to see what you’re up to these days. At faculty parties I have a few too many Two-Hearteds and then beg my colleagues to [...]

Muriel Rukeyser, Zombie Necromancer

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Joe Sacksteder I don’t care for this new zombie renaissance. And I don’t mean that like I’m afraid of zombies or something. I just think that 1). it’s a default subject matter for horror writers, 2). all interesting scenarios and subject matters were long [...]

Synecdoche, West Virginia

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Joe Sacksteder This past spring I was attending a Creative Writing Department meeting here at Eastern Michigan University, and one of my colleagues mentioned a list of literary terms that we’re supposed to make sure all of our Intro students are familiar with. I [...]

Important Poetry

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Joe Sacksteder One good thing about the gym that I go to is that people are always leaving behind old issues of Harper’s and The New Yorker, allowing me to cancel both of my subscriptions in exchange for getting them like a month or [...]

Why Muriel Rukeyser? Why a website just for her?

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Elisabeth Däumer Friends, colleagues, and students have asked me: Why Rukeyser? What's so special about her? Why create a Muriel Rukeyser website? Why make her the focus of an interdisciplinary online "meeting place"? I've been thinking how best to say this and have come [...]

Rukeyser’s indentations

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Elisabeth Däumer So, I am curious, why are the lines indented the way they are in Rukeyser's poem "For My Son"? What is the difference between: You come from poets, kings, bankrupts, preachers, attempted bankrupts, builders of cities, salesmen, the great rabbis, the kings [...]

How to read Rukeyser?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Elisabeth Däumer It seems right to begin this blog on the new Rukeyser website by exploring the different ways of reading that Rukeyser's poetry invites or compels us to engage in. This semester, I am guiding an independent study on Rukeyser with Chelsea Lonsdale, [...]