Muriel Rukeyser Archives - Page 2 of 3 - The Muriel Rukeyser Living Archive

Muriel Rukeyser and Other Writers

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Catherine Gander In just a few days, I will have the pleasure of chairing a panel at the American Literature Association’s annual conference at Washington, DC. The panel, organised by Elisabeth Däumer (herself a force of intellectual connectivity of the sort Rukeyser celebrated) will bring together five established and emerging Rukeyser scholars including myself and Professor Däumer: Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, whose diligent scholarship recently brought Rukeyser’s ‘lost novel’ Savage Coast to light and publication; Laura Passin, whose work on the politico-aesthetic strains of contemporary American poetry traces valuable lines of influence to the lyrical, subjective [...]

mthunter222018-12-28T16:56:55+00:00May 19, 2014|Ruke Blog|0 Comments

‘Islands’: Dragging Our Heads Back

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Marian Evans The latest draft of the Throat of These Hours radio play, now with a rigorous reader, was hard and slow. I had to reduce – drop storylines, drop characters, drop themes, drop dialogue – and distill. Reduce and distill again. Sometimes I lost Muriel Rukeyser. Sometimes I lost the story. Sometimes I lost heart. Often I had to drag my head back to the play, most easily through listening to one of Christine White’s draft compositions, for part of The Speed of Darkness and for Then. What a blessing they've been. What a [...]

mthunter222018-12-28T00:08:51+00:00December 14, 2013|Ruke Blog, Throat of These Hours (play)|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 [...]

mthunter222013-10-03T14:33:48+00:00October 3, 2013|Ruke Blog|1 Comment

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 those hours. Who will speak these days, if not I, if not you? Throat of These Hours is two plays, one for stage and one for radio. Both now in second draft, they have long-ago beginnings, when a lover gave me a photocopy of The Speed of Darkness. I don’t [...]

mthunter222013-06-06T23:55:34+00:00June 6, 2013|Ruke Blog|4 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

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 tell me if they’ve seen you recently. I consider editing your Wikipedia page, and it kills me to know that there are others who are far more qualified. I try to remember those days back in undergrad when we were so bold and carefree. Remember how we used to make [...]

mthunter222012-12-01T01:01:52+00:00December 1, 2012|Ruke Blog|1 Comment

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 ago exhausted, and 3). our current fascination with the genre points to disturbing cultural predilections. So I was surprised when reading a new compilation put out by Butler University’s Pressgang Press, Monsters: A Collection of Literary Sightings, that my favorite story was Amiee Bender’s Among Us. Briefly, it starts as [...]

mthunter222012-11-23T22:27:20+00:00November 23, 2012|Ruke Blog|0 Comments

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 immediately became nervous and scouted the room for other people who looked like they might have never heard of this list. Either everyone was pretty good at pretending–Ah yes, the list!–or I was the only one who missed the memo. I discreetly obtained a copy of the list without anybody [...]

mthunter222012-11-16T18:08:00+00:00November 16, 2012|Ruke Blog|2 Comments

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