Muriel Rukeyser

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
Children: William L Rukeyser
Relatives: Rebecca Rukeyser
Website: murielrukeyser.emuenglish.org

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."

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.

{snip}

Excavation of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel, Gauley Bridge, WV, 1930-31, and Acute Silicosis

Dr. Helen Lang Department of Geology & Geography West Virginia University