The Collected Poems Of Muriel Rukeyser

by Rukeyser, Muriel

• ISBN13: 9780822942474
• ISBN10: 082294247X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

Summary

Muriel Rukeyser held a visionary belief in the human capacity to create social change through language. She earned an international reputation as a powerful voice against enforced silences of all kind, against the violence of war, poverty, and racism. Her eloquent poetry of witness-of the Scottsboro Nine, the Spanish Civil War, the poisoning of the Gauley Bridge laborers-split the darkness covering a shameful world. In addition to the complete texts of her twelve previously published books, this volume also features new poems discovered by the editors; Rukeyser's translations, including the first English translations of Octavio Paz's work; early work by Rukeyser not previously published in book form; and the controversial book-length poem Wake Island. An introduction by the editors traces Rukeyser's life and literary reputation and complements discerning annotations and textual notes to the poems.

Table of Contents

Editors' Notes	xxiii
Acknowledgments	xxix
Introduction	xxxiii
Theory of Flight (1935)
Poem Out of Childhood
Poem Out of Childhood	3	(2)
Song for Dead Children	5	(1)
In a Dark House	6	(3)
Effort at Speech between Two People	9	(2)
Notes for a Poem	11	(1)
Place-Rituals	12	(1)
Tradition of This Acre	12	(1)
Ritual of Blessing	12	(1)
Wooden Spring	13	(1)
Sonnet	13	(1)
Letter, Unposted	14	(1)
Sand-Quarry with Moving Figures	15	(1)
Wedding Presents	15	(1)
Three Sides of a Coin	16	(3)
Breathing Landscape	19	(1)
Four in a Family	19	(1)
This House, This Country	20	(1)
Theory of Flight
Preamble	21	(3)
The Gyroscope	24	(1)
The Lynchings of Jesus	25	(1)
Passage to Godhead	25	(1)
The Committee-Room	26	(3)
The Trial	29	(2)
The Tunnel	31	(7)
The Structure of the Plane	38	(1)
The Structure of the Plane	38	(3)
The Strike	41	(1)
The Lover	42	(2)
Night Flight: New York	44	(3)
Theory of Flight	47	(1)
The Blood Is Justified
For Memory	48	(1)
Life and Works	48	(1)
Holy Dying	49	(1)
Ritual for Death	50	(1)
City of Monuments	51	(2)
Study in a Late Subway	53	(1)
Child and Mother	53	(2)
Eccentric Motion	55	(1)
Sundays, They Sleep Late	56	(1)
Thousands of Days	57	(1)
The Surrounded	58	(1)
Burlesque	59	(1)
Movie	60	(1)
Metaphor to Action	61	(1)
Citation for Horace Gregory	62	(1)
Cats and a Cock	63	(5)
The Blood Is Justified	68	(5)
U.S. I (1938)
The Book of the Dead
The Road	73	(1)
West Virginia	74	(1)
Statement: Phillippa Allen	75	(2)
Gauley Bridge	77	(1)
The Face of the Dam: Vivian Jones	78	(1)
Praise of the Committee	79	(3)
Mearl Blankenship	82	(1)
Absalom	83	(3)
The Disease	86	(1)
George Robinson: Blues	87	(1)
Juanita Tinsley	88	(1)
The Doctors	89	(3)
The Cornfield	92	(2)
Arthur Peyton	94	(1)
Alloy	95	(1)
Power	96	(3)
The Dam	99	(3)
The Disease: After-Effects	102	(2)
The Bill	104	(2)
The Book of the Dead	106	(5)
Night-Music
A Flashing Cliff	111	(1)
Girl at the Play	111	(1)
Burning Bush	112	(1)
Eel	113	(2)
Homage to Literature	115	(1)
The Handclap	115	(1)
Trophies	116	(1)
Panacea	117	(1)
In Hades, Orpheus	118	(1)
The Drowning Young Man	119	(1)
Boy with His Hair Cut Short	119	(1)
Course	120	(1)
More of a Corpse than a Woman	121	(1)
Three Black Women	122	(1)
Formosa	122	(1)
Night-Music	123	(1)
Time Exposures	123	(1)
The Child Asleep	124	(2)
Adventures, Midnight	126	(1)
Night-Music	127	(1)
Driveway	128	(1)
Lover as Fox	129	(1)
Gift-Poem	130	(1)
Woman and Emblems	131	(1)
Woman and Bird	131	(1)
The Birthday	131	(1)
Woman and Music	132	(1)
Outpost	132	(1)
Two Voyages
The Cruise	133	(11)
Mediterranean	144	(11)
A Turning Wind (1939)
Moment of Proof
Reading Time : 1 Minute 26 Seconds	155	(1)
Song, the Brain-Coral	155	(1)
Target Practice	156	(1)
Otherworld	157	(1)
Landing at Liverpool	157	(1)
The Island	158	(1)
Otherworld	159	(2)
Nuns in the Wind	161	(1)
For Fun	162	(2)
Correspondences	164	(1)
Democritus Laughed	164	(1)
Tree of Days	164	(1)
1/26/39	165	(1)
Correspondences	166	(2)
Noguchi	168	(1)
Seventh Avenue	169	(1)
The Shortest Way Home	170	(1)
Palos Verdes Cliffs	171	(1)
Paper Anniversary	172	(2)
From the Duck-Pond to the Carousel	174	(1)
Asylum Song	174	(1)
The Victims, a Play for the Home	175	(2)
M-Day's Child	177	(1)
Speech for the Assistant, from Houdini	178	(1)
Judith	179	(2)
Lives
``The risen image shines, its force escapes, we are all named''	181	(1)
Gibbs	182	(3)
Ryder	185	(3)
Chapman	188	(3)
Ann Burlak	191	(4)
Ives	195	(4)
Wake Island (1942)	199	(88)
Beast in View (1944)
One Soldier	207	(1)
Beast in View
Ajanta	207	(1)
The Journey	207	(1)
The Cave	208	(1)
Les Tendresses Bestiales	209	(1)
Black Blood	210	(1)
The Broken World	210	(1)
Mortal Girl	211	(1)
Child in the Great Wood	212	(1)
The Meeting	213	(1)
The Key	214	(1)
Darkness Music	215	(1)
Song	215	(1)
Shooting Gallery	216	(1)
Suicide Blues	216	(1)
Wreath of Women	217	(4)
Madboy's Song	221	(1)
Drunken Girl	222	(1)
Love and Its Doors and Windows	222	(1)
The Minotaur	223	(1)
Gift-Poem	224	(4)
Holy Family	228	(1)
Who in One Lifetime	228	(1)
from ``To the Unborn Child''	229	(1)
Leg in a Plaster Cast	230	(1)
Bubble of Air	231	(1)
Sea Mercy	232	(1)
Long Past Moncada	232	(1)
Chapultepec Park---1	233	(1)
Chapultepec Park---2	234	(1)
A Game of Ball	235	(1)
Gold Leaf	236	(1)
All Souls	236	(1)
Evening Plaza; San Miguel	237	(1)
Beast in View	238	(1)
Letter to the Front	239	(8)
``Women and poets see the truth arrive''	239	(1)
``Even during war, moments of delicate peace''	239	(1)
``They called us to a change of heart''	240	(1)
Sestina	241	(1)
``Much later, I lie in a white seaport night''	242	(1)
``Home thoughts from home; we read you every day''	242	(1)
``To be a Jew in the twentieth century''	243	(1)
``Evening, bringing me out of the government building''	243	(1)
``Among all the waste there are the intense stories''	244	(2)
``Surely it is time for the true grace of women''	246	(1)
The Soul and Body of John Brown	247	(40)
The Green Wave (1948)
``Let poems and bodies love and be given to air''	252	(1)
Water Night	253	(1)
Eyes of Night-Time	253	(1)
This Place in the Ways	254	(1)
Song, from ``Mr. Amazeen on the River''	255	(1)
Cloud, Airs, Carried Me Away	255	(1)
Salamander	256	(1)
His Head Is Full of Faces	257	(1)
Mrs. Walpurga	257	(2)
A Certain Music	259	(1)
The Motive of All of It	259	(1)
Green Limits	260	(1)
The Children's Orchard	261	(1)
Christmas Eve	261	(1)
Crayon House	262	(1)
A Charm for Cantinflas	263	(1)
Traditional Tune	264	(1)
Foghorn in Horror	265	(1)
Summer, the Sacramento	265	(1)
Speech of the Mother, from The Middle of the Air	266	(1)
Then I Saw What the Calling Was	267	(1)
Translations: Six Poems by Octavio Paz
The Bird	268	(1)
Poet's Epitaph	268	(1)
Spark	269	(1)
Two Bodies	269	(1)
The Street	269	(1)
Lovers	270	(1)
Rari from the Marquesas
Rari for Tahia and Piu	271	(1)
Rari for O'Otua	272	(1)
A True Confession	272	(1)
Careful of the Day	273	(1)
Rari for Hepuheku	273	(1)
Rari	274	(1)
Rari to Encourage Youth	274	(1)
Rari, to Be Bothered by Mosquitoes	274	(1)
Not Before I Fall Asleep	275	(1)
Easter Eve 1945
Easter Eve 1945	276	(1)
Private Life of the Sphinx	277	(3)
Nine Poems for the unborn child	280	(7)
Orpheus (1949)	287	(308)
Elegies (1949)
First Elegy. Rotten Lake	299	(3)
Second Elegy. Age of Magicians	302	(2)
Third Elegy. The Fear of Form	304	(3)
Fourth Elegy. The Refugees	307	(3)
Fifth Elegy. A Turning Wind	310	(4)
Sixth Elegy. River Elegy	314	(4)
Seventh Elegy. Dream-Singing Elegy	318	(3)
Eighth Elegy. Children's Elegy	321	(4)
Ninth Elegy. The Antagonists	325	(3)
Tenth Elegy. Elegy in Joy	328	(5)
Body of Waking (1958)
I
Haying Before Storm	333	(1)
Phaneron	333	(1)
The Young Girl of the Mississippi Valley	334	(1)
A Birth	334	(1)
King's Mountain	335	(1)
Mother Garden's Round	336	(1)
Rite	337	(1)
Ringling	338	(1)
After Their Quarrel	338	(1)
Tree	339	(1)
Night Feeding	340	(1)
The Return	341	(1)
Unborn Song	342	(1)
The Two Illuminations	342	(1)
F.O.M.	343	(1)
Exile of Music	344	(1)
On the Death of Her Mother	344	(1)
``Make and be eaten, the poet says''	345	(1)
Hero Speech	346	(1)
The Watchers	347	(1)
A Ballad Theme	348	(1)
Asleep and Awake	349	(1)
Of Money. And the Past.	350	(1)
``Long enough. Long enough''	351	(1)
The Loan	352	(1)
Pouring Milk Away	353	(1)
Children, the Sandbar, that Summer	353	(1)
Born in December	354	(1)
The Sixth Night: Waking	354	(1)
Nevertheless the Moon	354	(1)
Speed, We Say	355	(1)
The Birth of Venus	356	(1)
The Place at Alert Bay	357	(1)
Voices of Waking	357	(1)
Divining Water	358	(1)
Translations: Octavio Paz
``The hand of day opens''	359	(1)
``At daybreak go looking for your newborn name''	360	(1)
Fable	360	(1)
Day	361	(1)
Proverbs	362	(1)
``In her splendor islanded''	362	(1)
``Like ivy the creeper with a thousand hands''	363	(1)
Life of the Poet	363	(1)
The Prisoner	364	(2)
from Sun Stone	366	(1)
Suite for Lord Timothy Dexter	367	(1)
``They face us in sea-noon sun, just as he saw them waiting''	367	(1)
How to Impress Massachusetts	367	(2)
Three Nights I Dreamed	369	(1)
Kings and Contemporaries	370	(2)
The Pickle, the Temple	372	(4)
The Kind of Woman	376	(1)
Guessing Time	377	(2)
Are You Born?---I	379	(1)
``Murmurs from the earth of this land, from the caves and craters''	380	(1)
``The tree of rivers seen and forgotten''	380	(1)
``The power of war leads to a plan of lives''	381	(1)
``A tree of rivers flowing through our lives''	382	(1)
``The sea has opened, the limit of his dream''	382	(1)
Powerplant	383	(1)
``In the last hour of night, a zebra racing dawn''	384	(1)
Fields Where We Slept	384	(1)
Portrait of a Man, with a Background of Holdings	385	(1)
``A red bridge fastening this city to the forest''	386	(1)
``Power never dominion''	387	(1)
``The sky is as black as it was when you lay down''	388	(1)
``On your journey you will come to a time of waking''	389	(1)
``This is the net of begetting and belief''	389	(1)
Body of Waking	390	(5)
``Sounds of night in the country of the opposites''	395	(1)
Willkie in The Gulliver	396	(1)
``Then full awake you will recognize the voice''	396	(1)
``In your time, there have been those who spoke clearly''	397	(1)
He Had a Quality of Growth	398	(1)
Are You Born?---2	399	(4)
Waterlily Fire (1962)
The Speaking Tree	403	(1)
To Enter That Rhythm Where the Self Is Lost	403	(1)
For a Mexican Painter	404	(1)
A Song of Another Tribe	404	(1)
Song	405	(1)
Waterlily Fire	405	(1)
The Burning	405	(1)
The Island	406	(2)
Journey Changes	408	(1)
Fragile	409	(1)
The Long Body	409	(4)
The Speed of Darkness (1968)
Clues
The Poem as Mask	413	(1)
Orpheus	413	(1)
What Do I Give You?	413	(1)
The Transgress	414	(1)
The Conjugation of the Paramecium	414	(1)
Junk-Heap at Murano	415	(1)
Clues	416	(1)
In Our Time	417	(1)
Double Dialogue	417	(1)
Homage to Robert Frost	417	(1)
The Six Canons	418	(1)
Forerunners	418	(1)
Orgy	419	(1)
The Overthrow of One O'Clock at Night	420	(1)
Among Roses	420	(1)
What I See	421	(1)
Believing in Those Inexorable Laws	421	(1)
Song : Love in Whose Rich Honor	422	(1)
Niobe Now	422	(1)
Song : The Star in the Nets of Heaven	423	(1)
Air	423	(1)
Gift	424	(1)
Cries from Chiapas	424	(1)
The War Comes into My Room	425	(1)
Delta Poems	426	(1)
Spirals and Fugues	427	(1)
Anemone	428	(1)
Fighting for Roses	428	(1)
For My Son	429	(1)
Poem	430	(1)
The Power of Suicide	430	(1)
The Seeming	431	(1)
Song from Puck Fair	432	(1)
Not Yet	432	(1)
Landscape with Wave Approaching	433	(1)
Segre Song	434	(1)
Bunk Johnson Blowing	434	(1)
Cannibal Bratuscha	435	(2)
What Have You Brought Home from the Wars?	437	(1)
One Month	438	(1)
Silence of Volcanoes	439	(1)
What They Said	439	(1)
A Little Stone in the Middle of the Road, in Florida	440	(1)
The Blue Flower	440	(1)
Woman as Market	441	(1)
Forgetting and Remembering	441	(1)
Word of Mouth	442	(1)
The Return	442	(1)
Word of Mouth	443	(2)
Endless	445	(1)
Games
The Backside of the Academy	445	(2)
Mountain : One from Bryant	447	(1)
The Flying Red Horse	447	(1)
The Outer Banks	448	(6)
Lives
Akiba	454	(1)
The Way Out	454	(1)
for the Song of Songs	455	(2)
The Bonds	457	(1)
Akiba Martyr	458	(1)
The Witness	459	(1)
Kathe Kollwitz	460	(1)
``Held between wars''	460	(1)
``Woman as gates, saying''	461	(1)
``Held among wars, watching''	462	(1)
Song : The Calling-Up	463	(1)
Self-Portrait	463	(2)
The Speed of Darkness	465	(6)
Breaking Open (1973)
Searching / Not Searching
Waking This Morning	471	(1)
Despisals	471	(1)
What Do We See?	472	(1)
Looking at Each Other	473	(1)
Desdichada	474	(1)
Voices	475	(1)
Fire	475	(1)
Waiting for Icarus	476	(1)
from City of Paradise	477	(1)
The Question	477	(1)
In Her Burning	478	(1)
Rondel	479	(1)
More Clues	479	(1)
Myth	480	(1)
Searching / Not Searching	480	(1)
``What kind of woman goes searching and searching?''	480	(1)
Miriam : The Red Sea	481	(1)
For Dolci	481	(1)
Concrete	482	(1)
Brecht's Galileo	482	(1)
Reading the Kieu	482	(1)
The Floor of Ocean	483	(1)
H.E.D.	483	(1)
The Artist as Social Critic	484	(1)
The President and the Laser Bomb	484	(1)
Not Searching	485	(1)
The Question	485	(1)
``Searching / not searching. To make closeness''	486	(1)
``What did I see? What did I not see?''	486	(1)
A Simple Experiment	487	(1)
Along History	488	(1)
Boys of These Men Full Speed	488	(1)
All the Little Animals	489	(1)
Next	490	(1)
Two Years	490	(1)
Iris	490	(2)
Orange and Grape
Ballad of Orange and Grape	492	(1)
Rock Flow, River Mix	493	(1)
Martin Luther King, Malcolm X	494	(1)
Looking	494	(1)
Don Baty, the Draft Resister	495	(1)
Te Hanh : Long-Ago Garden	496	(1)
Welcome from War	496	(1)
Facing Sentencing	497	(1)
Secrets of American Civilization	497	(1)
Wherever	498	(1)
Bringing	498	(1)
A Louis Sonnet	499	(1)
After Melville	500	(2)
The Writer	502	(1)
Gradus Ad Parnassum	502	(1)
From a Play : Publisher's Song	503	(1)
In the Night the Sound Woke Us	503	(1)
In the Underworld	503	(4)
Afterwards	507	(1)
Flying to Hanoi	508	(1)
It Is There	508	(1)
The Running of the Grunion	509	(2)
Sacred Lake	511	(1)
Northern Poems
Songs of the Barren Grounds	512	(1)
The Old Days	512	(1)
Inland, Away	512	(1)
I'm Here Again	513	(1)
Not Much Good	514	(1)
My Breath	514	(1)
I Recognize This Song	515	(1)
The Black Ones, the Great Ones	516	(1)
Trout Fishing	517	(1)
How Lovely It Is	517	(1)
The Word-Fisher	518	(1)
Stroking Songs	518	(1)
A Girl for a Boy---Stroking Song	518	(1)
The Baby on the Mountain---Stroking Song	519	(1)
The Wiping Moss from the Ruins	519	(1)
Stroking Songs, Childhood Songs	520	(1)
Being Born	520	(1)
Shooting Star	520	(1)
Breaking Open	521	(2)
Columbus	523	(3)
Burning the Dreams	526	(1)
Death and the Dancer	526	(1)
Rational Man	526	(2)
The Hostages	528	(5)
The Gates (1976)
St. Roach	533	(1)
Dream-Drumming	534	(1)
Double Ode	534	(3)
Painters	537	(1)
Rune	537	(1)
How We Did It	538	(1)
Islands	538	(1)
Blue Spruce	539	(1)
Artifact	540	(1)
Ms. Lot	540	(1)
Boys in the Branches	541	(1)
Song : Lying in Daylight	542	(1)
Hypnogogic Figure	542	(1)
The Lost Romans	543	(1)
Canal	544	(1)
For Kay Boyle	545	(1)
Resurrection of the Right Side	545	(1)
The Wards	546	(1)
The Sun-Artist	547	(2)
Poem White Page White Page Poem	549	(1)
Fable	549	(1)
Neruda, the Wine	550	(1)
Before Danger	551	(1)
Song : Remembering Movies	551	(1)
Work, for the Day Is Coming	551	(1)
Recovering	552	(1)
Parallel Invention	553	(1)
Poem	554	(1)
Not to Be Printed, Not to Be Said, Not to Be Thought	554	(1)
Back Tooth	555	(1)
Destruction of Grief	555	(1)
Trinity Churchyard	556	(1)
Burnishing, Oakland	557	(1)
The Iris-Eaters	558	(1)
Slow Death of the Dragon	558	(2)
Mendings	560	(1)
Then	561	(1)
The Gates	561	(1)
``Waiting to leave all day I hear the words''	561	(1)
``Walking the world to find the poet of these cries''	562	(1)
New Friends	562	(1)
``The Cabinet minister speaks of liberation''	563	(1)
``Among the days''	563	(1)
The Church of Galilee	564	(1)
The Dream of Galilee	564	(1)
Mother as Pitchfork	565	(1)
``You grief woman you gave me a scarlet coverlet''	565	(1)
``Air fills with fear and the kinds of fear''	565	(2)
``Long ago, soon after my son's birth''	567	(1)
``For that I cannot name the names''	567	(1)
``Crucified child---is he crucified? he is tortured''	567	(1)
``So I became very dark very large''	568	(1)
``All day the rain''	568	(5)
Juvenilia
Antigone	573	(1)
Cities of the Morning	573	(1)
Autumn in the Garden	574	(1)
The Ballad of the Missing Lines	575	(1)
November Sketches	576	(2)
To a Lady Turning Middle-Aged	578	(1)
Place-Poems: New York	579	(1)
O City	579	(1)
Fourteenth Street	579	(1)
The New School for Social Research	580	(1)
Sheridan Square Conversation	580	(1)
The New Bridge	581	(1)
Park Avenue	581	(1)
College Special	582	(1)
Empire State Tower	582	(1)
``Dear place, sweet home''	583	(1)
For an Aesthete	583	(1)
Pastorale No. 2	584	(7)
A New Poem
An Unborn Poet	591	(4)
Abbreviations	595	(2)
Annotations	597	(40)
Textual Notes	637	(14)
Bibliography	651	(4)
Index of Titles	655	(8)
Index of First Lines	663