Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation".
One of her most powerful pieces was 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.
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.
Read more about Muriel Rukeyser: Early Life, Activism and Writing, In Other Media, Works
Famous quotes by muriel rukeyser:
“When I wrote of the women in their dances and wildness, it was a mask,
on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself.
...
No more masks! No more mythologies!”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“I am haunted by interrupted acts,
introspective as a leper, enchanted
by a repulsive clew,
a gross and fugitive movement of the limbs.
Is this the love that shook the lights to flame?”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)