The Essential Muriel Rukeyser audiobook

Adrienne Rich must have been mightily influenced by Rukeyser in the late 1950s as she was “opening” her verse from the formalism in which she began. The “documentary” poems together called “The Book of the Dead”, the myth-based poems, and the late anti-authoritarian sequence “The Gates” are most interesting to me.

A wonderful compilation of some of her best poetry. However, Trethewey’s introduction left too much to be considered. For new readers of Rukeyser, especially since this was printed in 2021, more background of the poet should have been explored/researched.

I came to this book not knowing much about the poet, just an idea of the time when she lived but not what currents in American poetry she was associated with. The opy I had contained a short introduction by Natasha Trethewey mentioning the parallels between Rukeyser's time and our own, but did not really set the context, so all I can report on now is the impression each poem gave on its own. Without a chronology, a sense of what she was reading, what the reception to her work was, it was hard to gain a feeling for the nuances which I could tell were present.Many of the poems comment on events taking place at the time they were composed, including some long pieces about Appalachian miner's labor demands coming from the diagnosis of silicosis in their lungs. I could see a sympathy for the powerless fighting against powerful opponents running through these, whether those adversaries were corporate or ideological. In another of these poems, 'Letters to the Front,' she brings up issues of identity during the second World War. She talks here about the action she feels needs to be taken, not the abstract reasoning behind the fighting. It seems to me that each one has a moral center which isn't too hard to locate. As to theme, other poems describe urban life ('City of Monuments'), reproductive issues ('The Speed of Darkness'), mythic images ('Private Life of the Sphinx,' 'Niobe,' 'Myth,' and 'Waiting for Icarus'), and the speaker's legacy after death ('What They Said') with great conviction. Here and there the language takes flight, but most of the time it is sober, plain-spoken, serious, never confessional. There are short poems and long ones, some of which are self-aware about the act of writing, others which are so down to earth they seem almost prosy.I feel that this is a good collection to get acquainted with the work of a poet who doesn't get a lot of mention now. Her style and areas of concern are quite different from mine, but I think reading through these poems and working out how they fit in is probably a good exercise for anyone interested in writing.I received this book in the form of an Advance Reader's Copy through Netgalley so that I could post a review of my impressions.

I'm not sure how this particular poetry slid under the radar, but this is the first time I'm really reading her work, and I don't know why I hadn't up until now. Rukeyser is a deeply moving and solid poet, mixing emotion with blutness and reality. I like much of her work in this collection, and hope that I can read more in the near future. *Book provided by NetGalley

With a forward from the distinctly American voice of Natasha Tretheway, this collection of Muriel Rukeyser's work speaks to our daily lives as clearly as it spoke to hers. Clear and cutting, she calls out senseless violence, masked life, and what it means to love in a broken world. A wonderful collection for readers new to Rukeyser's voice as well as those already familiar with her force.