Muriel Rukeyser

Written in response to the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster of 1931 in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, The Book of the Dead is an important part of West Virginia's cultural heritage and a powerful account of one of the worst industrial catastrophes in American history. The poems collected here investigate the roots of a tragedy that killed hundreds of workers, most of them African American. They are a rare engagement with the overlap between race and environment in Appalachia. Published for the first time alongside photographs by Nancy Naumburg, who accompanied Rukeyser to Gauley Bridge in 1936, this edition of The Book of the Dead includes an introduction by Catherine Venable Moore, whose writing on the topic has been anthologized in Best American Essays.

The Book of the Dead

Observing that poetry is a natural part of our pastimes and rituals, Rukeyser opposes elitist attitudes and confronts Americans' fear of feeling. Multicultural and interdisciplinary, this volume makes an irrefutable case for the centrality of poetry in American life.

The Life of Poetry

Jan Heller Levi

Janet Kaufman

Anne Herzog

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.

Collected Poems Of Muriel Rukeyser

Natasha Trethewey

Poems

Essential Muriel Rukeyser

Bertolt Brecht

Brief humorous verse on a variety of topics.

twelve poems for children

Uncle Eddie's moustache

The Speed of Darkness

Beast in View

The Green Wave

Selected Poems

Out of Silence

Gunnar Ekelöf

transl. by Muriel Rukeyser ...

Selected poems

Selected Poems by Muriel Rukeyser

David Spangler

The musical presents Houdini's congressional testimony against spiritual mediums, and shows his great feats of escape, his complex relationships with his mother and his wife, and his ironic, untimely death on Halloween 1926.".

A Musical

Houdini

Willard Gibbs

Those who have traveled know the experience of extended time and sharpened perception. Muriel Rukeyser's account of Puck Fair - the last existing pagan festival of the goat - captures just that state of consciousness. Set in County Kerry, Ireland, The Orgy evokes this great American poet's journey of sensual and psychological transformation in the midst of a lush account of Irish culture and tradition.

The Orgy

Two long poems as well as recent short poetry, including a group of translations from the Spanish of Octavio Paz.

Body of Waking

This book contains one of Muriel Rukeyser's most powerful pieces; a group of poems entitled The Book of the Dead (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.

U.S. 1

Breaking Open

The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

The Gates

Muriel Rukeyser

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