The Rukeyser Revival
My new article for Rain Taxi
I first heard the name Muriel Rukeyser on a trip to Morgantown in 2017. West Virginia University Press was publishing a new edition of The Book of the Dead, Rukeyser’s documentary poem from 1938. Rukeyser always intended for her poem, written in response to an industrial disaster that killed hundreds a few years earlier in Gauley Bridge, WV, to be accompanied by Nancy Naumburg’s photographs. West Virginia’s publication fulfilled Rukeyser’s wish. Little did I know that it was part of a wave of publications—largely from indies and university presses—to resurface the work of this remarkable 20th century writer.
I wrote about Rukeyser last week for the Minneapolis-based Rain Taxi Review of Books. Editor Eric Lorberer asked if I might contribute to their 250 Years of American Literature series, with a piece linked to Spain. I remembered an interesting fact: Rukeyser (an American poet) was in Barcelona in 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Eric warned me “her story is big,” which I soon found out, but I became fascinated by this writer who attempted so much, with a distinct political motivation behind nearly all of her work.
Since my Rain Taxi piece focuses on The Muriel Rukeyser Era—a recent collection of prose edited by Eric Keenaghan and Rowena Kennedy-Epstein—I was not able to mention all the recent Rukeyser-related publications that I came across. I list five more titles below. I was grateful to have the opportunity to learn more about Rukeyser, and thank Eric and Rain Taxi, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, for the opportunity to write the piece, and the helpful edits which sharpened it. If you have read Rukeyser or have any favorites of her work, please let me know in the comments.
Willard Gibbs: The Whole Is Simpler than Its Parts by Muriel Rukeyser (Marginalian/McNally, 2025)—Maria Popova’s imprint with McNally Editions kicked off last year with this reissue of Rukeyser’s 1942 biography of the 19th century physicist Gibbs. Popova told Publishers Weekly: “The Muriel Rukeyser biography of scientist Willard Gibbs is the reason why we started this imprint…for those who choose to read it, it will change their lives.”
Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser’s Twentieth Century by Rowena Kennedy-Epstein (Cornell, 2024)—There’s an interesting chapter in this award-winning monograph recounting Kennedy-Epstein’s discovery of Rukeyser’s Spanish Civil War novel, Savage Coast. To learn more about this book, and The Muriel Rukeyser Era, I recommend this episode of Cornell’s 1869 podcast. Kennedy-Epstein’s biography of Rukeyser is also forthcoming from Bloomsbury.
Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2013)—A striking portrait of Rukeyser, taken by Richard Avedon in 1975, graces the cover of this edition from a UK-based indie. Edited by Adrienne Rich, it was first published by Library of America in 2004. I loved the phrasing of this publisher’s note: “Adrienne Rich was unaware of the existence of the autobiographical novel Savage Coast, the one remaining draft of which was discovered (misfiled) in the Muriel Rukeyser archive at the Library of Congress.”
Beyond Ourselves: Contemporary Poets on Muriel Rukeyser edited by Catherine Gander and Stefania Heim (West Virginia, 2026) — On the Seawall has an interview between the editors and Claire Farley, who writes “this collaborative project provides a fresh account of Rukeyser’s influence.” (The book was commissioned by Book Work’s Derek Krissoff before his 2023 departure from the press. I also worked with West Virginia on publicity for many years, but my contract concluded in 2024.)
The Essential Muriel Rukeyser (Ecco, 2021)—Natasha Trethewey edited this collection, which she worked on during the pandemic. From her introduction: “Within the social isolation of that moment, the inevitable separation of our individual lives, came the moral authority and ethical conviction of Rukeyser’s voice, and I could no longer think of the idea of essential in the same way.” Elisa Gabbert wrote in her column in the New York Times on the book: “I find Rukeyser’s voice most thrilling when she writes from a will to change.”
I am very happy to learn more about Muriel Rukeyser. I worked (my first job after college) at the Exploratorium in San Francisco which was founded by physicist Frank Oppenheimer. Frank and Muriel were lifelong friends. And Frank was quick to bring musicians, artists, poets and writers as artists in residence into his science museum, (which was free at that time, to the public). Rukeyser wrote that "the universe is made of stories, not of atoms," a sentiment that resonated with Oppenheimer's philosophy on science and human perception.