Muriel Rukeyser

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 two late. Last week somebody left behind the September 2012 issue of The Sun (score!), and a piece of non-fiction called "Ten Days in November" by Eric Anderson caught my eye. In the first of the ten days, Anderson is addressing an Intro to Poetry class: The worst thing you [...]

2012-11-10T01:54:39+00:00November 10, 2012|Ruke Blog|5 Comments

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 up with four primary reasons: 1. Her poetry makes things happen--it has a peculiar type of energy which emerges when it's read in groups. 2. We still don't know how to read her work. We seem to figure out how to read some of her poems--for instance "Book of the [...]

2012-06-16T12:20:33+00:00June 16, 2012|Ruke Blog|4 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 [...]

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