(1913–80). U.S. poet and activist Muriel Rukeyser is best known for her poems concerning social and political issues. Her condensed, elliptical style is marked by symbolism and an intensity of feeling.
Born on Dec. 15, 1913, in New York City, Rukeyser attended private schools and in 1930–32 was a student at Vassar College. During that time she contributed poems to Poetry magazine and other periodicals. She worked on the staff of the Student Review in 1932–33 and later edited the Housatonic, a literary journal. In 1935 her first volume of poems appeared as Theory of Flight in the Yale Younger Poets series.
Rukeyser broadened her experience by active involvement in the issues of the day. She attended the Scottsboro trials (a major civil-rights case) and witnessed the opening events of the Spanish Civil War, and the scope of her poetry widened accordingly. U.S. 1 (1938) describes the oppressed poor along the industrial Atlantic seaboard. The work includes The Book of the Dead, which tells of miners dying of silicosis in West Virginia, a piece considered one of Rukeyser’s best works. Her use of fragmented, emotional imagery is sometimes thought lavish, but her poetry is praised for its power and acuity. The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser was published in 1978.
Rukeyser wrote 14 volumes of poetry. In addition to her verse, she wrote a well-received biography of the mathematician and physicist Willard Gibbs (1942); critical works, including The Life of Poetry (1949); and books for juveniles. She also translated the poetry of Octavio Paz (Selected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1963), Gunnar Ekelöf (Selected Poems of Gunnar Ekelöf, 1967; with Leif Sjöber), and others. From 1956 to 1967 she taught at Sarah Lawrence College. She died in New York City on Feb. 12, 1980.