How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?: The Life and Writing of Muriel Rukeyser
Even if Muriel Rukeyser never attained the status of Whitman or Dickinson, the poets Adrienne Rich compares her to in one of these essays, she was an American original. She was less a marquee poet than a force of nature, an imposing woman who gave herself to a variety of aesthetic positions, political causes, and passionate friendships and antagonisms. (Gerald Stern recalls being taunted by an audience member when he and Rukeyser read together once and starting to defend himself by saying, "I don't want to be mean," only to hear Rukeyser whisper, "Be mean, be mean.") Herzog and Kaufman, English professors at West Chester University and the University of Utah, respectively, gather writings by 37 Rukeyser fans; a number of these pieces are poems, the most luminous of which is Richard Howard's "A Sibyl of 1979," in which he describes being given a computer that had baffled Rukeyser, finding in it some draft phrases she had left there, and making them into his own tribute to her. For larger public and academic libraries.ADavid Kirby, Florida State Univ., TallahasseeCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.