Muriel Rukeyser: The Social Poet and The Problem of Communication

Muriel Rukeyser: The Social Poet and the Problem of Communication
Author(s): John Malcolm Brinnin

Source: Poetry, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Jan., 1943), pp. 554-575
Published by: Poetry Foundation
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P O E T R Y: A Magazine of Verse
MURIEL RUKEYSER:
THE SOCIAL POET AND THE PROBLEM OF COMMUNICATION
IN THE poetry of Muriel Rukeyser, as represented in three

volumes published between 1930 and 1939, it is possible to
trace the history of a movement in American letters that was
at the same time literary and political. Since her range is wide,
and her methods pliable, she has expressed in these volumes the
sentiments of many in her generation, and has suggested certain
influences that reshaped and ultimately transformed them.
The swift turns of political events in these ten years have
evoked parallel movements in the matter and methods of poets,
particularly those who draw their material and inspiration from
the immediate issues of their time. Emphasis upon the social
and political phases of experience is the hallmark of those years
just as, say, the concern for a revision of ethical, particularly
sexual, values of bourgeois convention marked the preceding
generation. In the work of certain poets, political stress and
disillusion has resulted in a retreat toward obscurantism, the
withdrawal from the objective arena into a subjective room. This
change has been accompanied by confusions both of vision and
method or, often, a slackening of emotional power toward in
difference which, in turn, has led to a concentration upon the
minima of experience and dependence upon the bare resources
of language. It is a divorcement that has served to drive many
poets into the contemporary equivalent of the ivory tower, re
furbished, perhaps, with surrealist and Freudian furniture, but
a familiar landmark in its isolation, its detachment from the
political flow of masses and men.
554
Muriel Rukeyser
On the other hand, however, and somewhat overlooked at the

present time, are found a number of poets whose social convic
tions, though transformed and challenged in the strain of con
tinued partisanship in a difficult world, have remained essene
tially as firm and simplified as in their first conscious statemen-ts.
Some, to be sure, have remained so close to the partisanship of.
radical journalism that their verse is merely a kind of poetic
commentary upon the movements of the Party Line. Others,;
however, and Muriel Rukeyser is the most distinguished among
these, have undergone the disappointments and tortured doubts
of the last decade and yet succeeded in enlarging both their
strength of purpose and the scope of their poetry.
One of the most interesting phases of the transformation of
the social poet in years of stress is the change in his use of lan
guage. In the case of Muriel Rukeyser, it moves from that of
simple dedarative exhortation, in the common phrases of the
city man, to that of a gnarled, intellectual, almost private observa
tion. In her earlier usage, images are apt to be simple and few;
the whole approach is apt to be through the medium of urban.
speech. In the latter work, images become those of the psychol
ogist, or of the surrealist, charged with meaning and prevalent
everywhere. Parallel with this change is the increasing com
plication of symbols; the first are public, the last, even though
they may represent universal issues, are privately conceived
and privately endowed. In these changes may be found the
central problem of the modern social poet. That is, how may he
develop his talent in the full resources of the language and ac
cumulated techniques, and yet speak clearly and persuasively
to men about him.
I shall attempt here to trace the development of- the mover
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P O E T R Y: A Ala gazine of Verse
ment that crossed, roughly, the period between the stock market
crash of 1929 and the signing of the Russo-German Non-Aggres
sion Pact of 1939. Upon both of these events turned the destinies
of millions of men. It is only natural that poetry should have
experienced a dislocation as deep-rooted and as broad. However,
the principle emphasis will be upon the problem of language
as communication. Since the social poet is one to whom com
munication is the first and necessary virtue, his attempts to be
strong and clear without seeming banal, and his attempts to use
the complex resources of the English language in an original
way, are twin problems that are as yet unresolved. Since the
work of Muriel Rukeyser demonstrates both of these extremes,
a careful examination of the shifts and expansions of her method
and thought may lead to a meaningful resolution.
With the publication of her first volume, Theory of Flight,
prize winner of the annual contest sponsored by the Yale Uni
versity Press, American poetry found its first full-blown expres
sion of the rebellious temper that prevailed on American cam
puses and among the younger intellectuals. Its success was
immediate, and it took its place as the American equivalent of
such work as that published by the new revolutioniary group of
English poets exemplified by Auden, Spender, and Lewis. The
volume went into several printings and Miss Rukeyser was praised
for the ruggedness of her technique, her experimentalism, and
for the powerful utterance which, from a woman, seemed unique.
Critics found in her work a relief from the popular "female"
sentiments that had marked such poets as Millay, Teasdale, and
Wylie. Though it appeared for a time that she was a writer
around whom a host of radical poets might group themselves,
no association comparable to that of the English group came
556
Muriel Rukeyser
about. The reasons for this failure are complex, but for the
purpose of this discussion it is enough to state the fact, since it
is one of the reasons why Miss Rukeyser's work is so easily
separable from the great body of social poetry written in those
years.
THEORY OF FLIGHT
An attitude of defiance on the part of youth toward the older
generation is, of course, the first expected reaction of a revo
lutionary adolescent. In that conflict, rebellion is brought to its
simplest terms. Miss Rukeyser uses the word "father" both as
an atavic reference and, at times, dearly with her own parent
in mind. Though the defiant attitude is always clear-cut, with
uncompromising demands for a break with paternal tradition,
there is often a note of tenderness in her work which tends to
qualify the starker sentiments. This quality shows clearly in
an early poem, in which she speaks of herself walking with her
father in a suburban countryside which he has chosen as suit
able for investment. He wants to become wealthy in order to
insure her happiness. She understands this as a gesture of kind
ness, but is helpless to show her revulsion from the whole
enterprise:
We'll own the countryside, you'll see how soon I will,
you'll have acres to play in: I saw the written name
painted on stone in the face of the steep hill:
"That's your name, Father!" "And yours," he shouted, laughing.
"No, Father, no!" He caught my hand as I cried,
and smiling, entered the pit, ran laughing down its side.
The central interest here is a dramatic one; the language is
simplified to the rhythm of actual speech, unadorned. Conse
quently, the virtue of the passage lies in the expert handling
of the half-articulated conflict of generations as represented in
this father and his daughter.
557
Another attitude attached to the father symbol is the Vic

torian concept of "the sins of the fathers."
They who manipulated and misused our youth,
smearing the centuries upon our hands,
trapping us in a welter of dead names,
snuffing and shaking heads at patent truth.
Unlike the Victorian code, this admits of no philosophical
acceptance; rather, the sins of the fathers provide the sources
of rebellion. Since the child has moved from filial devotion
toward a social consciousness, the vision of good that the latter
engenders is strong enough to erase the earlier loyalty from her
mind. She acts, not as an individual in familial convention, but
as a social being whose only morality is that of the collective:
Understand my treason, See I betray you kissing,
I overthrow your milestones weeping among your tombs.
Speaking allegiances, I turn,

steadfastly to destroy your hope. Your cargo in me
swings to ports hostile to your old intent.
In us recurrences: My generation feeds

the wise assault on your anticipation,
repeating historic sunderings, betraying our fathers,
all parricidal in our destinies.
We focus on our times, destroying you, fathers

in the long ground : you have given strange birth
to us who turn against you in our blood
needing to move in our integrity, accomplices
of life in revolution, though the past
be sweet with tall shadows, and although
we turn from treasons, we shall accomplish these.
This language is rich, simple, passionate; the rhythms are abrupt,
shifting as speech. The unity of emotion in the tragic solemnity
of address holds together an uneven technique. This is the voice
of a person who is certain that she is speaking for many, who
maintains, nevertheless, a strong sense of personal identity. Nor
558
Muriel Rukeysef
is there any hesitation; the path of action is difficult but the

speaker is fully resolved. Thus, she may speak in easy command
of images that are uncomplicated and familiar.
Once the separation from the father has been completely real
ized, there is a recurrent celebration of the joys of comradeship
in radical enterprise. This strain is made authentic by the fact
that the poet immediately identifies her poetic ideas with her
day to day activities in the radical movement. In this way, the
simplest, most pedestrian chore, involving pamphlets or reports,
may undergo poetic elevation until it stands forth as an act of
heroism. Life has assumed a new meaning in the company of
Travellers
speakers disgressing from the ink-pocked rooms,
bearing the unequivocal sunny word.
However, though she is resolved in action, she is continually
conscious of her separation from the conventional background
of family; yet the backward look is still sharp with defiance:
I have left forever
house and maternal river
given up sitting in that private tomb
quitted that land that house that velvet room
Frontiers admitted me
to a growing country
I carry the proofs of my birth and my mind's reasons
but reckon with their struggles and their seasons.
In such passages there is a straightforward statement of an emo
tional and highly personal reaction. There is no attempt to
justify or to explain; there is a new allegiance to which the
poet has become dedicated with her whole being. It darifies
her past and gives hope to her future.
The first indication of a concern that becomes major in
her succeeding work occurs in the poem, Effort at Speech Be
559
tween Two People. Here, with overtones of Eliot and the per
sonal frustrations of the twenties, is a suggestion that communi
cation is ultimately impossible.
: I am not happy. I will be open.
I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
There has been fear in my life. Sometimes I speculate
On what a tragedy his life was, really.
: Take my hand. First my mind in your hand. What are you now?
When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide,
and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death
if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty,
if light had not transformed the day, I would have leapt.
I am unhappy. I am lonely. Speak to me.
This poem, in its isolation from the political temper of the
rest of the book, seems unrepresentative. Its attitudes are ado
lescent, its sense of tragedy superficial and commonplace. How
ever, in the light of Miss Rukeyser's later development, it assumes
importance. It is the individualistic anchor in the first book
which holds the author to her own emotions. When those emo
tions are forced to play upon the hazards of political action, a
new conflict becomes manifest.
Soon after the personal acceptance of a place in the revolu
tionary movement, the author puts by the sheer expression of
exhilaration in an attempt to realize an intellectual objectification
of her position. One of the choices for this is the concept of
flight in modern mechanical terms.
sky, indude earth now.
Flying, a long vole of descent
renders us land again.
Flight is intolerable contradiction.
We bear the bursting seeds of our return
we will not retreat; never be moved.
Stretch us onward include us in the past.
560
Muriel Rukeyser
In this instance, all of history is seen as an attempt at human

expansion in the terms of flight. And though the author knows
that this attempt has produced no release from the human con
dition, she rejoices in the fact that it has produced an increas
ingly complex, and increasingly able, human community:
Now we can look at our subtle jointures, study our hands,
the tools are assembled, the maps unrolled, propellors spun.
In another instance, not entirely successful, the poet attempts
to identiXfy mankind with the structure of the plane. The result
is a fresh juxtaposition of imagery, but the parallelism of forms
is hazy.
the final exhaust stroke serves to release the gases,
allowing the piston to scavenge the cylinder.
We burn space, we sever galaxies,
solar systems whirl about Shelley's head,
we give ourselves ease, gentlemen, art and these explosions
and Peter Ronsard finger-deep in roses
The pilot of this plane is the political hero, who is ready to guide
human ambition into flight. Though the poet, in her own voice,
has remained outside through all of this poem, at the very end she
makes a familiar intrusion, exhorting the multitude to give its
allegiance to the man at the controls:
do we say all is in readiness:
the times approach, here is the signal shock: ?
Master in the plane shouts "Contact"
master on the ground : "Contact!"
he looks up: "Now?" whispering : "Now."
"Yes," she says. "Do."
Say yes, people.
Say yes.
Yes.
Here the poet achieves the ultimate simplification of the horta
tory method,
Say yes, people.
Say yes.
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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Though the words are naive almost to the point of being absurd,
they form a dimax of such power and sincerity that they become
acceptable.
Though most of the poems in this first volume repeat the
same attitudes, in the same stress of oversimplification and fervor,
Miss Rukeyser manages, in a few passages, to incorporate into
respectable poetry some of the more profound tenets of dialec
tical materialism. In this attempt, she succeeds in retaining a
durable and clear language and, though her images are neither
new nor particularly arresting, the quiet yet passionate expres
sion of faith holds them together. They are, consequently, not
significant in themselves, but in unfamiliar juxtapositions.
Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time;
and in this expansion, time too grows for us
richer and richer toward infinity.
They promised us the gold and harps and seraphs.

Our rising and going to sleep is better than future pinions.
We surrender that hope, drawing our own days in,
covering space and time draped in tornadoes,
lightning invention, speed crushing the stars upon us,
-stretching the accordion of our lives, sounding the same chord
longer and savoring it until the echo fails.
Believe that your presences are strong,
O be convinced without formula or rhyme
or any dogma: use yourselves: be: fly.
Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time.
Here, the philosophical long-view is united with exhortation.
The result is beneficial to both attitudes. Exhortation becomes
less banal, less strident than many other calls to action or faith;
the long-view takes on certain of the excitements of immediacy.
In this passage, direct address seems to grow properly out of the
ahalysis that precedes it. There is no suggestion that the author
has left the established frame of reference.
562
Muriel Rukeyser
In The Lynchings of Jesus, Muriel Rukeyser makes use, in

poetic terms, of a tendency that was evident in the politics of
the Popular Front movement of the early and middle years of the
decade, i.e. the trick of rediscovering popular heroes as partisans
of modern issues. The Marxist aspects of Lincoln's thought, for
instance, or at least those aspects which could be shown as par
allel to modern Marxist sentiments, were re-examined and pub
licized. Thus, in Passage to Godhead, Miss Rukeyser reinvokes
the Christian legend:
Passage to godhead, fitfully glared upon
by blooding shinings over Calvary
this latest effort to revolution stabbed
against a bitter sacrificial tree.
The effect, though attained through methods that must remain
suspect, is often rich both as drama and as poetry. Since any
new interpretation of old mythology will have a local interest,
that is part of the success here:
Bruno, Copernicus, Shelley, Karl Marx : you
makers of victory for us : how long?
We love our lives, and the crucifixions come,
benevolent bugles smother rebellion's song
blowing protection for the acquiescent,
and we need many strengths to continue strong.
Whatever its consequences for the political expediency of the
moment, this is a healthy expansion of interest for the poet.
The strength of her partisanship assures a passionate viewpoint,
while the new symbols, and the necessity for new imagery, test
her poetic ingenuity.
Another strain in this book that, beginning unobtrusively,
leads toward later complexity, is that suggested in the poem
Eccentric Motion. This poem is similar to many of Auden's
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PO ET R Y: A Magazine of Verse
and of the English group of Oxford radicals who came to prom

inence in the early thirties. The language of the popular ballad,
of the music-hall song, is used to make serious observation.
There is a foreign ring here, quite alien to the body of Miss
Rukeyser's work, yet one which persists through all of her books.
Coated in learning, do we
cause its crown to fall?
The plane, the bath, the car
extend our protection:
(But have we seen it all?
Shall we continue
In this direction?
This is not the way

To save the day.
Perhaps more important than the suggestion of foreign influ
ences, this poem shows that Miss Rukeyser retains, even in the
days of her most outspoken commitment to a social program, a
detached viewpoint: she is able to speak of herself and the
society she abhors as "we." Thus, a completely minor poem
suggests the whole turn of her latter work.
Theory of Flight makes a single impression: emotional, un
hesitant affirmation. Though there are marginal suggestions of
many new influences, none is realized in any distinctive poem.
The poet's emphasis is clearly upon the thing said, and not the
manner of expression. The volume is plethoric and sprawling,
full of extravagances, yet rich and evocative. It would be only
natural for the author of such a work to seek development in
control.
U. S. 1
In 1938, Muriel Rukeyser published her second book of poems,
564
Muriel Rukeyser
deriving its title from the federal highway that runs from Maine
to Florida. This collection showed a stage in her development
that was notable for tendencies toward objectification of those
feelings that, in the earlier book, were expressed with emotional
extravagance. This process was furthered by her use of a new
form that had come into prominence in those years, a form that
was neither straight fiction nor straight exposition but a dramatic
presentation of facts that combined elements of both. This form
went generally under the name of "reportage," and those who
used it were concerned with aligning social data in the dramatic
design of fiction. It was not, primarily, literature since its pur
pose was to call the reader to action. Translated into cinematic
terms, the form resulted in a vogue of "documentary" films.
Interested in the new reportage, both through her reading and
through her work with documentary films, Muriel Rukeyser set
about to write a poetic account of the tragedy that was exposed
in the deaths of thousands of miners in the state of West Virginia.
This holocaust was the result of silicosis infection, a preventable
industrial disease, that had spread among great numbers of miners
through the negligence or wilful indifference of employers. It
was a matter much publicized, especially in the radical press,
and eventually was brought to Congressional investigation. Miss
Rukeyser went to West Virginia and used the methods of a re
porter in speaking with many of the persons involved, learning
at first hand the pitiful conditions in which they lived, examin
ing company reports and stock quotations, speaking with owners
and. investigators alike.
The long title poem, U. S. 1, was the result. Though she man
aged to present in orderly fashion the findings of a good reporter,
it is surprising to find, under the name of poetry, language as
565
barren as statistics. Many of the poems in the sequence are

barely distinguishable from routine newspaper commentary.
Since there is no success anywhere in her attempt to crowd the
facts of a committee report into the beat of poetry, the poem as
a whole is a failure. It is too long, the language routine and
unevocative, the arrangement of data completely lacking in dra
matic contrasts. Unlike earlier instances where her dramatic
sense brought life to an otherwise undistinguished poem, this
work remains flat and prosaic.
U. S. 1 represents the most extreme limit of Miss Rukeyser's
attempt to objectify and it is so successful, in the narrow sense,
that all suggestions of the elevation of poetry have been objec
tified out of existence. In one or two passages, when the poet
intrudes with extraneous commentary, there is a heightening of
effect that only serves to point the weakness of a method so
extreme. It is also significant in this regard to notice that, when
the poet leaves the statistical approach to speak for herself, ele
ments of poetry return momentarily, suggesting that, with bal
ance, the method might not always end in failure:
Nothing is lost, even among the wars,
imperfect flow, confusion of force.
It will rise. These are the phases of its face.
It knows its seasons, the waiting, the sudden.
It changes. It does not die.
The familiar immediacy of partisanship does not show here; it
,is evident that a sense of withdrawal has been achieved, begin
nings of separation of the individual from the unhesitant life of
action. There is partisanship, to be sure, but it is no longer
of the kind that attaches itself to a specific group or program.
The poet has begun to watch things happen, to comment more
and judge less.
566
Muriel Rukeyser
Words on a monument.
Capitoline thunder. It cannot be enough.
The origin of storms is not in the clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown's body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.
In the middle section of this book, between the long reportage
poem and the allegorical Voyage, occur a number of lyrics that
rank with the finest examples of Miss Rukeyser's work. These
have been achieved through a balance of subjective emotion and
objective record. In A Flashing Cliff, for instance, Love, in its
most abstract sense, becomes the source of human power, the
revolutionary agent in all existence. The image to hold this
concept is that of a frozen waterfall:
Will you fight winter to break in immense speed
resisting and sensitive, a waterfall-flash
sparkling full across the vicious plain?
This passage is representative of the poem as a whole and shows
the beginnings of a great concentration of language and ideas.
Such fusion was not possible while the poet spoke in the single
mindedness of a political program. Opposites are not enjoined
in slogans, since the words on a banner must be outspoken and
immediately understandable. Yet, though the poet has come
far from sloganizing, the new verse is built upon a use of lan
guage so complex, and a compression of ideas so intense, that
it is unquestionably removed from the grasp of the lay reader,
not even to mention the proletarian.
Here Miss Rukeyser comes to the crux of the problem of the
social poet: whether to insist upon first premises, even though
that means a static repetition of familiar ideology, or to exercise
full imagination and the resources of language in an endeavor
567
to contribute a new dimension to poetry, though that attempt,

in its inevitable intellectual concentration, must deny the social
audience.
In this middle stage, she makes no definite choice. There are
poems compact and difficult to penetrate, but they are, nonethe
less, exhilarating exercises in modern rhythms and textures. No
matter how far afield she may go in the errors of obscurity her
technique is never dull, most often brilliant. In a sense, the
poet has fallen in love with language; a romance that was delayed
by the demands of political conviction.
Among these complex poems are those wherein language is
reduced to utter simplicity, wherein poetic excitement comes
from the dramatic presentation of the idea, as in the tender
Boy With His Hair Cut Short:
He sees his decent suit laid out, new pressed,
his carfare on the shelf. He lets his head fall, meeting
her earnest hopeless look seeing the sharp blades splitting,
the darkened room, the impersonal sign, her motion,
the blue vein, bright on her temple, pitifully beating.
To continue a thin strain from the earlier book, there is the
touch of Auden:
Give my regards to the well-protected woman,
I knew the ice-cream girl, we went to school together;
There's something to bury, people, when you begin to bury.
When your women are ready and rich in their wish for the world,
destroy the leaden heart,
we've a new race to start.
There are personal poems that are completely individual in
expression, unique among her work in that they are removed,
in almost every influence, from social relationships. These show
a new symbolism that is almost always tenuous and psychological.
Yet the power of her language, its oblique, beaten intensity,
never fails to excite wonder:
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Muriel Rukeyser
See the entire scene bright as you fly

round lots pauper all year, shacks lame with weather,
this sour fertile time teeming and ramshackle
before you, loving 'clean sight in spyglass air.
And around town again. River, River.
Why do people live on islands?
Though a new direction has been firmly established, there re
main instances of hearkening back to the earlier role of prophet
ess. Though direct exhortation is almost gone, the convictions
of the poet have remained strong. When she speaks out now,
it is in her own voice as a sophisticated poet and not as a coiner
of slogans. At the same time, speech that has a public signifi
cance is held in restriction by her use of special, intangible,
almost private symbols. In a sequence of poems called Night
Music, there is a psychological analysis of the individual response
to chaotic society. In the tangled welter of symbols and mean
ings, an inherent revolutionary ardor does not come clearly
through until the last line:
Make music out of night will change the night.
But this resolution is dependent upon antecedent knowledge;
it is not immediately available, even in context, to every reader.
This second book, then, accomplishes the separation of the
poet from her comrades and from the radical vernacular, in the
sense that only a part of her interest is centered upon the imme
diate conflict. The tragedy for the artist as a social conscious
ness lies in the fact that, as her powers as a poet expand in the
terms of craft, she is isolated as an articulate leader among those
who daim her allegiance. The partisan feels that it is much too
early to examine the bases of modern consciousness, since the
manifest battle is not won, and any deviation that means a slack
ening or diversion of effort from the immediate goal becomnes
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PO ET R Y: A Magazine of Verse
inconsequential, if not reactionary. Thus, the poet is driven into

a sense of loneliness out of all proportion. Her heart is in the
same place, but the demands of her immense talent have not
allowed her to remain static. A diversion of her art from her
beliefs has taken place that is parallel to the diversion of art
from life in America today.
A TURNING WIND
Because of the progressive development of early themes and
devices of craft, it is possible to say that the books of Muriel
Rukeyser are different not in kind, but in degree. A Turning
Wind, the latest of her published works in poetry, reinforces
that conviction, and it would be but repetitious to point out and
analyze all those strains that have akready been shown in trans
formation from the first to the second book. However, changes
have been rung upon certain of the earlier motifs that are arrest
ing enough to warrant at least a cursory examination.
Instead of the barren objectification of social data that caused
the failure of the poem U. S. 1, Miss Rukeyser has developed
a strong and evocative set of symbols. The problems of a gen
eration, for instance, are no longer centered exdusively in the
terms of the striker or the organizer, but in the larger concept
of Death, who appears in many disguises. This is a concept
that is fashionable in current poetry.
A baroque night advances in its clouds,
maps strain loose and are lost, the flash-flood breaks,
the lifting moonflare lights this field a moment,
while death as a skier curves along the snows,
death as an acrobat swings year to year,
turns down to us the big face of a nurse.
In the same manner the fascist becomes, not the enemy at the
door, but the magician, the symbol of all darkness and chicanery.
570
Muriel Rukeyser
The poet has shuffled off an obvious truth to darify a deeper one.
Magnetic ecstasy, a trance of doom
mean the magician, worshipping of darkness
with gongs and lurid guns, the colors of force.
He is against the unity of light.
Such symbolization gives the poet a new freedom; the effect is
toward elevating her themes into universal significance.
The hesitant, truncated passages of direct address tha-t occurred
here and there throughout the second book give way to more
forceful utterance. However it is obvious that the poet is no
longer speaking to her first audience. Now she speaks almost
exdusively to fellow artists, to those who, intellectual and sensi
tive, are in retreat. The poet, as one who has survived a general
disillusion and bewilderment, is happy to reaffirm.
New combinations; set out materials now,
Combine them again! the existence is the test.
What do you want? Lincoln blacking his lessons
in charcoal on an Indiana shovel?
or the dilettante, the impresario's beautiful skull
choosing the tulip crimson satin, the yellow satin
as the ballet dances its tenth time to the mirror?
Will you have capitals with their tarnished countesses
their varnished cemetery life
vanished Picassos
or clean acceptable Copenhagen
or by God a pure high monument
white yellow and red
up against Minnesota?
The choices that are offered in these passages have little cognitive
meaning for the ordinary reader; they are significant only for those
who have understood the attraction of a dying, over-sophisticated
culture as opposed to the blunt naive health of a rising one. Yet
never has Muriel Rukeyser spoken with more conviction, more
truly caught the crux of an issue in wild beautiful language.
An earlier preoccupation with heroic character comes into evi
571
P O E TR Y: A Magazine of Verse
dence in the long last section of the book entitled Lives. In this
sequence of biographical appreciations the poet celebrates indi
viduals, only one of whom has been conspicuous for her devo
tion to the social good in explicit political terms. All of the
others, in one degree or another, have been unsung heroes, quietly
working in the arts and sciences with integrity and singularity
of purpose. Appreciations of this sort would have been impos
sible had the tone of the first volume prevailed, for there all in
dividualism is suspect, all heroics the will of the collective cen
tered in one person. This latter attitude must be considered an
advance, a healthy widening of sympathies since, even in social
terms, the dedication of these individuals to a central idea radi
ates, ultimately, for the collective good.
Though in U. S. 1 there is a manifest separation of the artist
from her whole function as a member of the human community,
a reader feels that she is not completely conscious of this, that
she is still somewhat bewildered at the change that has taken
place. Dislocation of poetic sensitivity has, in these times, often
led to semi-hysterical privacy, to the abortive use of imagery
and symbolism from sources that are but half understood. Muriel
Rukeyser barely misses this pitfall in parts of the second book,
but if there has remained any doubt as to her powers of reinte
gration, they are dispelled upon reading the first poem in her
most recent volume, the elegy, Rotten Lake. This poem estab
lished the poet anew; though she has given up public speech
as a major premise, she is resolved within herself as never before.
This resolution brings together not only craft and direction, but
the inevitable disillusion of one who has seen the revolutionary
temper of her contemporaries become dissipated and insignifi
cant and who, herself, has been forced to reconcile grave doubts
572
Muriel Rukeyser
concerning the efficacy of certain policies. It has become evident,

in the late thirties, that the "revolution" was, for a very long
time to come, a lost cause. Events abroad had split the partisans
of the left into many contentious camps of opinion, resulting
in a general impotence that was a sorry thing to face when one
remembered the buoyancy of earlier years. While the movement
slackened, while its influence diminished, its partisans were thrown
into even greater despair by the spectacle of an appeasement pol
icy upon the part of great nations that violated every tenet of
p?rogress. At this point, unsure of his immediate political group,
and filled with hopelessness at the progressive darkening of the
world scene, the radical partisan reached his lowest ebb.
In the face of this Muriel Rukeyser achieved her finest se
quence of poems-the five elegies that begin the volume. These
poems show an integration of method, a fibre of belief, a philo
sophical authority superior to all that has gone before. Their
range includes all the strains that the poet has touched upon in
earlier experimentation, so that, in the greatest expansion of
her powers, she has achieved the dosest fusion of them as well.
Though she seems, at times, to have been caught like an innocent
with visions and beliefs in a world of abject denial, almost always
she is consciously reconstructing a faith that will match that of
her adolescence.
The poet is returning, sadder but wiser. Denying much of
experience, she finds strength in the simple faith of particular
friends. Beyond that, she would attain the discipline of an un
sentimental insight into the failing world in order to survive
its terrors with dignity. She has come to terms with tragedy.
Rejecting the subtle and contemplative minds
as being too thin in the bone; and the gross thighs
573
P-O E T R Y: A Magazine of Verse
and unevocative hands fail also. But the poet

and his wife, those who say Survive, remain;
and those two who were with me on the ship
leading me to the sum of the years, in Spain.
When you have left the river you will hear the war.
In the mountains, with tourists, in the insanest groves
the sound of kill, the precious face of peace.
And the sad frightened child, continual minor,
returns, nearer whole circle, 0 and nearer
all that was loved, the lake, the naked river,
what must be crossed and cut out of your heart
what must be stood beside and straightly seen.
A new dimension has been added to her poetry, and that has
come through the act of tragic affirmation. When this has been
accomplished the poet is released again. It is a phoenix birth.
I look in Rotten Lake
wait for the flame reflection, seeing only'
the free beast flickering black along my side
animal of my 'need,
and cry I want! I want! rising among the world

to gain my converted wish, the amazing desire
that keeps me alive, though the face be still, be still,
the slow dilated heart know nothing but lack,
now I begin again the private rising,
the ride to survival of that consuming bird
beating, up from dead lakes, ascents of fire.
This is a resolution that seems likely to endure for Miss
Rukeyser, since it contains both the core of her dedication and
her escape. For others, it is one impossible to attain. Not only
personal lack of creative stamina, but the disapproval of the
politically-minded critic will tend to curb their digressions. In
the face of such continued divergence, it seems unlikely that a
general reintegration upon the part of social poets can take place
for many years. Since the public symbols of these times are thin
and unevocative, they must be replaced by personal ones, or those
574
Theoretical Criticism
with special and literary interest. For the ultimate solution, we

must look to the social scene. Since great poetry is that which is
drawn from the depths of common myth, its rebirth will depend
largely upon the success of men in joining together in a society
that is homogeneous, whose fundamentals of belief are available
to everyone, and whose aims are the conscious enterprise of every
one. Until that state is approached, countless poets will, like
Muriel Rukeyser, be driven to heroic, but unwilling, resolution.
John Malcolm Brinnin
REVIEWS
THEORETCAL CRITICISM
The New Criticism, by John Crowe Ransom. New Directions.

IN THE four essays comprising this book Mr. Ransom examines
carefully the critical methods of I. A. Richards, William Emp
son, T. S. Eliot, and Yvor Winters, and ends with a plea for an
ontological critic. Mr. Ransom is devoid of pettiness and petu
lance, but not of pedantry and pretentiousness. He tries not to
denigrate his subject but to find what is valid in it. He is con
cerned primarily with formulating a firm theoretical background
for the criticism of poetry.
The book proceeds consecutively to develop an elaborate appa
ramtus that is extremely obscure. His theory, briefly, has to do
with structure, which is the logical thought in a poem, and
texture, which is the free detail.
Mr. Ransom, while he appreciates the distinction between
science and poetry, does not appreciate it wholly. If poetry is
concerned with the concrete and general, and science with the
575

Muriel Rukeyser: The Social Poet and The Problem of Communication

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Muriel Rukeyser: The Social Poet and the Problem of Communication

Author(s): John Malcolm Brinnin

THE SOCIAL POET AND THE PROBLEM OF COMMUNICATION

IN THE poetry of Muriel Rukeyser, as represented in three

On the other hand, however, and somewhat overlooked at the

Another attitude attached to the father symbol is the Vic

Speaking allegiances, I turn,

In us recurrences: My generation feeds

We focus on our times, destroying you, fathers

is there any hesitation; the path of action is difficult but the

In this instance, all of history is seen as an attempt at human

They promised us the gold and harps and seraphs.

In The Lynchings of Jesus, Muriel Rukeyser makes use, in

and of the English group of Oxford radicals who came to prom

This is not the way

barren as statistics. Many of the poems in the sequence are

to contribute a new dimension to poetry, though that attempt,

See the entire scene bright as you fly

inconsequential, if not reactionary. Thus, the poet is driven into

concerning the efficacy of certain policies. It has become evident,

and unevocative hands fail also. But the poet

and cry I want! I want! rising among the world

with special and literary interest. For the ultimate solution, we

The New Criticism, by John Crowe Ransom. New Directions.

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