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THE MURIEL RUKEYSER ERA: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND PERMISSIONS

THE MURIEL RUKEYSER ERA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND PERMISSIONS

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Notes

table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Epigraph
  4. Contents
  5. Acknowledgments and Permissions
  6. List of Abbreviations
  7. Note on This Textual Edition
  8. Editors’ Introduction
    1. All You Have to Do Is Challenge Them: The Muriel Rukeyser Era, Eric Keenaghan and Rowena Kennedy-Epstein
  9. Author’s Introduction
    1. Biographical Statement for “Under Forty: A Symposium on American Literature and the Younger Generation of American Jews” (1944), Muriel Rukeyser
  10. PART I. THE USABLE TRUTH: FIVE TALKS ON COMMUNICATION AND POETRY
    1. 1. “The Fear of Poetry” (1940, 1941)
    2. 2. “The Speed of the Image” (1940)
    3. 3. “Belief and Poetry” (1940)
    4. 4. “Poetry and Peace” (1940)
    5. 5. “Communication and Poetry” (1940)
  11. PART II. TWENTIETH-CENTURY RADICALISM: ON POLITICS, SOCIETY, AND CULTURE
    1. 6. “The Flown Arrow: The Aftermath of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case” (1932)
    2. 7. “From Scottsboro to Decatur” (1933)
    3. 8. “Women and Scottsboro” (1933)
    4. 9. “Barcelona on the Barricades” (1936)
    5. 10. “Barcelona, 1936” (1936)
    6. 11. “Words and Images” (1943)
    7. 12. “War and Poetry” (1945)
    8. 13. “A Pane of Glass” (1953)
    9. 14. “She Came to Us” (1958)
    10. 15. “The Killing of the Children” (1973)
    11. 16. “The Uses of Fear” (1978)
  12. PART III. MEDIA AND DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION: A PHOTO-TEXT AND RADIO SCRIPTS
    1. 17. “So Easy to See” (1946), Photography-and-Text Collaboration with Berenice Abbott
    2. 18. From Sunday at Nine (1949), Scripts for Two Radio Broadcasts
      1. Series Introduction Episode One: Emily Dickinson
      2. Episode Four: The Blues
  13. PART IV. MODERNIST INTERVENTIONS: ON GENDER, POETRY, AND POETICS
    1. 19. “Modern Trends: American Poetry” (1932)
    2. 20. “Long Step Ahead Taken by Gregory in New Epic Poem” (1935), review of Horace Gregory’s Chorus for Survival
    3. 21. “In a Speaking Voice” (1939), review of Robert Frost’s Collected Poems
    4. 22. “The Classic Ground” (1941), review of Marya Zaturenska’s The Listening Landscape
    5. 23. “Nearer to the Well-Spring” (1943), review of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus
    6. 24. “A Simple Theme” (1949), review of Charlotte Marletto’s Jewel of Our Longing
    7. 25. “A Lorca Evening” (1951)
    8. 26. “Many Keys” (1957), on women’s poetry
    9. 27. “Lyrical ‘Rage’” (1957), review of Kenneth Rexroth’s In Defense of the Earth
    10. 28. “A Crystal for the Metaphysical” (1966), review of Marianne Moore’s Tell Me, Tell Me: Granite, Steel, and Other Topics
    11. 29. “Poetry and the Unverifiable Fact” (1968)
    12. 30. “The Music of Translation” (1971)
    13. 31. “Thoreau and Poetry” (1972)
    14. 32. “Glitter and Wounds, Several Wildnesses” (1973), review of Anne Sexton’s The Book of Folly
    15. 33. “The Life to Which I Belong” (1974), review of Franz Kafka’s Letters to Felice
    16. 34. “Women of Words: A Prefatory Note” (1974)
  14. Appendix: Bibliographic and Archival Information for Selections by Muriel Rukeyser
  15. Notes on Contributors
  16. Selected Bibliography
  17. Index
  18. Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND PERMISSIONS

We wish to begin by thanking Bill and Rebecca Rukeyser, Muriel’s son and granddaughter, whose support of this project from its inception has been vital. They gave us their blessing and the estate’s permission to publish or reprint all the materials by Rukeyser appearing in this volume. Our editor at Cornell University Press, Mahinder Kingra, finally gave this collection a home. A community of Rukeyser scholars—including Elisabeth Däumer, Catherine Gander, Stefania Heim, Vivian Pollak, Jan Heller Levi, and Jan Freeman—supported our efforts with this and other Rukeyser-related endeavors. Tamara Kawar and Tina Dubois at ICM Partners provided timely assistance and coordination with the Muriel Rukeyser Estate. The keen eyes and guidance of Cornell University Press’s Jennifer Savran Kelly and Lori Rider, our production editor and copyeditor, respectively, helped bring the manuscript through the final editing and production processes. Lisa DeBoer assembled the index.

Eric began this undertaking many years ago. He would like to thank Rowena for joining him when the project was stalled. Her assistance in paring back the selections, giving the volume shape, and bringing the work to completion has been invaluable. Through the Faculty Research Award Program, the University at Albany (SUNY) and the SUNY Research Foundation funded three archival trips to the Library of Congress. Staff members at New York Public Library’s Berg Collection and the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division provided much assistance during and following these trips. Barbara Bair, the Manuscript Division’s specialist in literature, culture, and arts, especially, has been a proactive supporter. Many thanks also to Rob Casper, the head of the Library of Congress’s Poetry and Literature Center, for enthusiastically putting us into contact with her. Two of Eric’s former research assistants, James Searle and Farhana Islam, helped transcribe some of this volume’s materials. Cassandra Laity welcomed Eric’s first edited version of Rukeyser’s lost essay “Many Keys” for the inaugural issue of Feminist Modernist Studies. Many other colleagues and friends—in and outside the worlds of academia and poetry—urged the project’s completion. Eric is especially grateful for the support and interest of Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Lynne Tillman, Katharine Umsted, and his husband, Jeffrey Lependorf.

After being immersed in this archival material for many years while working on other books, Rowena was excited to join Eric on this project and make the material available to a wider audience. She would like to thank him for being such a generous and knowledgeable collaborator, and for the truly enormous effort he has put into transcribing and editing these texts. This has been a labor of love, evidenced in his attention to detail and care for Rukeyser’s work. The research for this work has been supported by the University of Bristol Faculty Research Fund, which has sponsored trips to Rukeyser’s archives at the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. As always, Rowena is so grateful for the support and love of her partner, Casey, and her children, Augie and Perry.

All material by Muriel Rukeyser is copyright Muriel Rukeyser, and reprinted by permission of the Estate of Muriel Rukeyser and ICM Partners. Some selections originally appeared in American Poetry Review, Contemporary Jewish Record, Daily Worker, Decision, Discovery, Henry David Thoreau: Studies and Commentaries, Housatonic, Kenyon Review, Life and Letters To-day, New Masses, New Republic, New Statesman (UK), New York Times, Parnassus, Poetry, Saturday Review, Scripps College Bulletin, Vassar Miscellany News, The War Poets, The World of Translation, and The World Split Open. The following previously unpublished texts are archived in the Papers of Muriel Rukeyser, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC: The Four Fears (cover image), The Usable Truth: Five Talks on Communication and Poetry, “So Easy to See,” Sunday at Nine, “Many Keys,” “She Came to Us” (unpublished version), “The Killing of the Children,” and “The Uses of Fear” (unpublished version). “Women and Scottsboro” is previously unpublished and archived at the Muriel Rukeyser Collection of Papers, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations, New York, New York. Full bibliographic information about all the selected texts by Muriel Rukeyser appears in the appendix.

Some editorial notes for “Many Keys” are derived in part from “‘There Is No Glass Woman’: Muriel Rukeyser’s Lost Essay ‘Many Keys,’” an article by Eric Keenaghan published in Feminist Modernist Studies, 2018, copyright Taylor and Francis, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/24692921.2017.1368883. Editorial notes for “Barcelona, 1936” are derived in part from “Barcelona, 1936” and Selections from the Spanish Civil War Archive, edited by Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, Lost and Found: The CUNY Poetic Document Initiative, series 2, no. 6, 2011, copyright Ammiel Alcalay and Lost and Found.

Permission to reprint quoted material in Rukeyser’s selections has been granted by Patrick Gregory, on behalf of the Horace Gregory and Marya Zaturenska literary estate, and Bradford Morrow, on behalf of the Kenneth Rexroth literary estate. All materials by Anne Sexton reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright by Anne Sexton, ℅ Linda Sexton, Literary Executor. All other authors’ materials cited by Rukeyser or by the editors are in the public domain, are fair use, or have been edited down by the editors to comply with fair use standards.

Our work on this project was motivated by the enthusiasm of the graduate and undergraduate students who, over the years, have been excited by their first encounters with Muriel Rukeyser and her work. Their energy and new interpretations have revitalized our own relationships to Rukeyser’s career as an author and activist. We dedicate this volume to our students, past and present, and to the next generations of readers who will carry on our work to illuminate that the twentieth century was, indeed, the Muriel Rukeyser Era.

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