Muriel Rukeyser

Muriel Rukeyser
Born	(1913-12-15)December 15, 1913 New York City
Died	February 12, 1980(1980-02-12) (aged 66) New York City
Occupation	poet, essayist, biographer
Citizenship	American
Education	Vassar College, Columbia University
Genre	Poetry
Subject	equality, feminism, social justice
Years active	1932-1980
Website
Muriel Rukeyser: A Living Archive

Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet, essayist, biographer, and political activist.

She was born in New York City and went to Vassar College. As a student reporter there, Rukeyser covered the 1932 Scottsboro trial in Alabama when nine black youths were accused of raping two white girls. Later she reported from Barcelona on the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. She protested against the Vietnam War. She was president of the American Center for PEN in the 1970s.

Her first book of poems, Theory of Flight won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 1935.

Poet Adrienne Rich said that Rukeyser wanted readers "to enlarge our sense of what poetry is about in the world, and of the place of feelings and memory in politics.”

Books

• Theory of Flight. (1935)
• Mediterranean. (1938)
• U.S. 1: Poems. (1938)
• A Turning Wind: Poems. (1939)
• The Soul and Body of John Brown. (1940)
• Wake Island. (1942)
• Willard Gibbs: American Genius. (1942)
• Beast in View. (1944)
• The Green Wave: Poems. (1948)
• The Life of Poetry. (1949)
• Orpheus. (1949)
• Elegies. (1949)
• Selected Poems. (1951)
• One Life. (1957)
• Body of Waking: Poems. (1958)
• Waterlily Fire: Poems 1935-1962. (1962)
• The Outer Banks. (1967, 1980)
• The Speed of Darkness: Poems.(1968)
• 29 Poems. (1972)
• Breaking Open: New Poems.(1973)
• The Gates: Poems. (1976)

Related pages

• List of poets from North America

Other websites

• Muriel Rukeyser at PennSound