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Muriel Rukeyser | |
|---|---|
 Rukeyser in 1945 | |
| Born | December 15, 1913 New York City |
| Died | February 12, 1980 (aged 66) New York City |
| Occupation | poet, essayist, biographer, screenwriter, novelist, critic |
| Citizenship | American |
| Education | Ethical Culture Fieldston |
| Alma mater | Vassar College, Columbia University |
| Subject | equality, feminism, motherhood, sexuality, social justice, anti-fascism, ecology, visual and cultural theory |
| Children | William L Rukeyser |
| Relatives | Rebecca Rukeyser |
| Website | |
| murielrukeyser | |
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet, essayist, biographer, novelist, screenwriter and political activist. She wrote across genres and forms, addressing issues related to racial, gender and class justice, war and war crimes, Jewish culture and diaspora, American history, politics, and culture. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation," Anne Sexton famously described her as "mother of us all", while Adrienne Rich wrote that she was “our twentieth-century Coleridge; our Neruda."[1]
One of her most powerful pieces was the long poem titled 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.
Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books, something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life.[2]
- ^ Rich, Adrienne (1993). "Beginners". The Kenyon Review. 15 (3): 12–19. JSTOR 4336859. Retrieved July 11, 2024.
- ^ "On "To Be a Jew in the Twentieth Century"". Modern American Poetry. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Archived from the original on August 20, 2008. Retrieved April 6, 2012.