The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

by Rukeyser, Muriel

• ISBN13: 9780822959243
• ISBN10: 0822959240
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-01
• 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.

Author Biography

Janet E. Kaufman is assistant professor of English at the University of Utah.
Anne F. Herzog is associate professor of English at West Chester University. They are coeditors of <I>"How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?": The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser (1999).
Jan Heller Levi, is the author of a collection of poems, Once I Gazed at You in Wonder, and editor of A Muriel Rukeyser Reader. She is working on a biography of Muriel Rukeyser.

Table of Contents

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