The Essential Muriel Rukeyser

Poems

Muriel Rukeyser

The definitive edition of selected work from a poet whose influence continues to be widely felt today, introduced by Natasha Trethewey
Engaging closely with the violence, oppression, and injustice that she witnessed in her lifetime, Muriel Rukeyser was one of the seminal poets of the mid-twentieth century. Closely informed by issues relating to equality, social justice, feminism, and Judaism, her impassioned poetry was often seen as a mode of social protest, but it was also heralded for its deep emotional impact; its personal perspective; forthright discussion of the female experience, particularly sex and single parenthood at a time when these topics were largely taboo; and its wide-ranging exploration of genre and form. As Adrienne Rich wrote: "Muriel Rukeyser's poetry is unequalled in the twentieth-century United States…She pushes us…to enlarge our sense of what poetry is about in the world, and of the place of feelings and memory in politics."

The Essential Muriel Rukeyser represents the curation of Rukeyser's most enduring and urgent work, gathered in one volume that spans the many decades of her life and career, and with an introduction from Natasha Trethewey, one of our most important contemporary poets.

The Road

These are roads to take when you think of your country

and interested bring down the maps again,

phoning the statistician, asking the dear friend,

reading the papers with morning inquiry.

Or when you sit at the wheel and your small light

chooses gas gauge and clock; and the headlights

indicate future of road, your wish pursuing

past the junction, the fork, the suburban station,

well-travelled six-lane highway planned for safety.

Past your tall central city’s influence,

outside its body: traffic, penumbral crowds,

are centers removed and strong, fighting for good reason.

These roads will take you into your own country.

Select the mountains, follow rivers back,

travel the passes. Touch West Virginia where

the Midland Trail leaves the Virginia furnace,

iron Clifton Forge, Covington iron, goes down

into the wealthy valley, resorts, the chalk hotel.

Pillars and fairway; spa; White Sulphur Springs.

Airport. Gay blank rich faces wishing to add

history to ballrooms, tradition to the first tee.

The simple mountains, sheer, dark-graded with pine

in the sudden weather, wet outbreak of spring,

crosscut by snow, wind at the hill’s shoulder.

The land is fierce here, steep, braced against snow,

rivers and spring. KING COAL HOTEL, Lookout,

and swinging the vicious bend, New River Gorge.

Now the photographer unpacks camera and case,

surveying the deep country, follows discovery

viewing on groundglass an inverted image.

John Marshall named the rock (steep pines, a drop

he reckoned in 1812, called) Marshall’s Pillar,

but later, Hawk’s Nest. Here is your road, tying

you to its meanings: gorge, boulder, precipice.

Telescoped down, the hard and stone-green river

cutting fast and direct into the town.

West Virginia

They saw rivers flow west and hoped again.

Virginia speeding to another sea!

1671—Thomes Batts, Robert Fallam,

Thomas Wood, the Indian Perecute,

and an unnamed indentured English servant

followed the forest past blazed trees, pillars of God,

were the first whites emergent from the east.

They left a record to our heritage,

breaking of records. Hoped now for the sea,

For all mountaines have their descents about them,

waters, descending naturally, doe alwaies resort

unto the seas invironing those lands . . .

Yea, at home amongst the mountaines in England.

Coming where this road comes,

flat stones spilled water which the still pools fed.

Kanawha Falls, the rapids of the mind,

fast waters spilling west.

Found Indian fields, standing low cornstalks left,

learned three Mohetons planted them; found-land

farmland, the planted home, discovered!

War-born:

The battle at Point Pleasant, Cornstalk’s tribes,

last stand, Fort Henry, a revolution won;

the granite SITE OF THE precursor EXECUTION

sabres, apostles OF JOHN BROWN LEADER OF THE

War’s brilliant cloudy RAID AT HARPERS FERRY.

Floods, heavy wind this spring, the beaten land

blown high by wind, fought wars, forming a state,

a surf, frontier defines two fighting halves,

two hundred battles in the four years: troops

here in Gauley Bridge, Union headquarters, lines

bring in the military telegraph.

Wires over the gash of gorge and height of pine.

But it was always the water

the power flying deep

green rivers cut the rock

rapids boiled down,

a scene of power.

Done by the dead.

Discovery learned it.

And the living?

Live country filling west,

knotted the glassy rivers;

like valleys, opening mines,

coming to life.

Statement: Philippa Allen

—You like the State of West Virginia very much, do you not?

—I do very much, in the summertime.

—How much time have you spent in West Virginia?

—During the summer of 1934, when I was doing social work

down there, I first heard...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Publisher’s Note
• Contents
• Introduction
• From Theory of Fight
• From U.S. 1
• From A Turning Wind
• From Beast in View
• From The Green Wave
• From Elegies
• From Body of Waking
• From Waterlily Fire
• From The Speed of Darkness
• From Breaking Open
• From The Gates
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher