Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) is one of our country's most influential yet neglected writers. She published fifteen collections of poetry, plays, translations, children's books, and several works of nonfiction. Her toys of fame include the Yale Younger Poets Award, the Copernicus Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Shelley Memorial Award. From 1975-1976, she served as president of P.E.N. American Center.
The Life of Poetry has the urgency of saying what one believes in
the face of crisis; crisis of the spirit and crisis in the
world.... Rukeyser's book is about poetry, always, and also about
much more ... modern film, jazz, war, science, musical comedy, her
own childhood and youth.... A brilliant mind fiercely at work.--The
New York Times Book Review
The Life of Poetry is a heartfelt, majestic testimonial, entirely
without the shortcomings of its genre. It is highly charged,
emotionally, and full of beautiful, sonorous language, but its
greatest virtue is that it has a bold thesis, bluntly stated:
Poetry can save your life.--THE PROVINCETOWN BANNER
Like most of Muriel Rukeyser's work, The Life of Poetry has been
out of print for twenty years, so its reappearance is a genuine
cultural event. Written in an expansive prose -poetic style, it's a
scarily beautiful book, almost disorienting in its clarity. Muriel
Rukeyser unspools one of the most passionate arguments I've ever
read for the notion that art creates meeting places, that poetry
creates democracy.The passion she speaks of is worthy of our fear.
It's history.--EILEEN MYLES, THE NATION
The Life of Poetry has the urgency of saying what one believes in
the face of crisis; crisis of the spirit and crisis in the world.
Rukeyser's book is about poetry, always, and also about much more
modern film, jazz, war, science, musical comedy, her own childhood
and youth. A brilliant mind fiercely at work.--The New York Times
Book Review
The reappearance of [Muriel Rukeyser's] remarkable The Life of
Poetry, originally published in 1949, is an event to celebrate. No
ordinary book of criticism, The Life of Poetry is written in a
prose which resembles lava overflowing, molten, incoherent, cooling
into shapes whose seeming resistance to hard-edged form bespeaks
the intense intellectual heat and explosiveness of their origin. To
read it is to enter a mind seething with the flow of connection
between poetry and everything else.--ALICE OSTRIKER, THE HUNGRY
MIND REVIEW
The Life of Poetry is a lost American classic restored to us by
Paris Press. In 1949 Rukeyser understood the breadth and potential
of our continent's poetries as few have done since as we look in
the face of the 'fear of poetry' she name, and its monsters, this
book seems written for us. What does poetry have to do with
democracy? Read it here. Jane Cooper's forward provides a vivid
context.--ADRIENNE RICH
Muriel Rukeyser loved poetry more than anyone I've ever known. She
also believed it could change us, move the world. This deep and
challenging book is a testament to her faith that we need not
encounter Poetry with fear. That openness to Poetry opens us to our
most essential inner life.--ALICE WALKER
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