Synopses & Reviews
Muriel Rukeyser, the late poet, journalist, translator, biographer, pilot, and social activist, has been described as an "American Genius" and our "20th century Whitman." Anne Sexton and Erica Jong both referred to Muriel Rukeyser as "the Mother of Everyone." To read her collected work is to track American history through the century and to question with her the particular nature of the American imagination. Rukeyser began publishing in the 1930s, writing about Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro boys, and the Popular Fronts stand against fascism, insisting always on the link between public subjects and the personal life. Until she died in 1980 at the age of 66, she persisted in bringing the events of the world into poetry, and poetry into the world. Her writing stretches the American poetic imagination, indeed the very definitions of American poetry, and guarantees her place in 20th-century American literature.
"How Shall We Teach Each Other of the Poet?" brings together the voices of those who have been challenged by the complexity and richness of Rukeysers poems: former friends, colleagues, editors, and students reflecting on their personal knowledge of the poet; contemporary poets probing the significance of Rukeyser as one who influenced their own poetry, and scholars offering new interpretations of her work.
Review
“Rukeyser does ...emerge from these pages, vibrant, defiant, gifted, and embracing.” —
Booklist“This book celebrates the fact that times have changed. We are at a moment in the history of poetry and ideas in the United States that is particularly receptive to the inclusiveness of Rukeyser's vision. We are ready to know her better, and 'How Sall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?' provides the means.” —Women's Review of Books
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [309]-317) and index.
About the Author
Anne F. Herzog is on the English Faculty of West Chester University.
Janet E. Kaufman is on the English Faculty of the University of Utah.
Table of Contents
Contributors: Alicia Ostriker * Jane Cooper * Meg Schoerke * Anne F. Herzog * Janet E. Kaufman * Adrienne Rich * Richard Howard * Elaine Edelman * Chris Llewellyn * Michael True * John Bradley * Reginald Gibbons * Aaron Kramer * Chris Cokinos * Sharon Olds * Lyn Lifshin * Lorrie Goldensohn * Almitra Marino David * Jan Johnson Drantell * Susan Ayres * Ruth Porritt * Susan Eisenberg * John Lowney * Stephanie Hartman * Stephanie Strickland * Shoshana Wechsler * Michele Ware * James Brock * Leslie Ann Minot * Daniel Gabriel * Judith Hemschemeyer * Jan Heller Levi * Anne Marx * Denise Levertov * Gerald Stern * Daniel Halpern * William L. Rukeyser