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The Life of Poetry
Our century's lost classic about American culture, the essential saving force of poetry, and how it can improve the quality of life in the United States
Observing that poetry is a natural part of our pastimes and rituals, Muriel Rukeyser explores the vital force of poetry and the arts in American culture. She opposes elitist attitudes and addresses Americans' fear of feeling, which contribute to a devaluation of poetry and the arts in the U.S. Multicultural and interdisciplinary, this collection of essays makes an irrefutable case for the centrality of poetry in American life.
Observing that poetry is a natural part of our pastimes and rituals, Muriel Rukeyser explores the vital force of poetry and the arts in American culture. She opposes elitist attitudes and addresses Americans' fear of feeling, which contribute to a devaluation of poetry and the arts in the U.S. Multicultural and interdisciplinary, this collection of essays makes an irrefutable case for the centrality of poetry in American life.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
36 people are currently reading
1084 people want to read
About the author
Muriel Rukeyser
83 books156 followersMuriel Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation".
One of her most powerful pieces was a group of poems entitled The Book of the Dead (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.
Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books, something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life.
One of her most powerful pieces was a group of poems entitled The Book of the Dead (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.
Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books, something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
June 7, 2011
Wow. I'm going to use so much in here when I have to defend poetry and why it matters. "Why is it feared?" Rukeyser asks. "It demands full consciousness..."
December 26, 2020
In a Dark House
“Two on the stairs in a house where they
had loved :
mounting, and the steps a long ascent
before them
brown: a single step creaking high in the
flight; the turn :
the quiet house and the cheese-yellow
walls shadowed by night,
dark; and the unlit lamps along the wall.
Dusk piles in old house-corners rapidly.
Shade grows
where corners round to flights of stairs
again. Evening
accumulates under the treads of
mounting stairs.”
...
“He turns his face to her, walk unbroken.
Her face
questioning turns: there is no help for each
in the other.
There are no eyes on them.
The shaft is empty of voices, all but the creaking step,
regularly in the flights recurring, preknown, dreaded that sound.
There is no face that he can see but hers.
She knows his look, and has known it for a long time.
The creak of one step is a punctuating rhyme.”
“Two on the stairs in a house where they
had loved :
mounting, and the steps a long ascent
before them
brown: a single step creaking high in the
flight; the turn :
the quiet house and the cheese-yellow
walls shadowed by night,
dark; and the unlit lamps along the wall.
Dusk piles in old house-corners rapidly.
Shade grows
where corners round to flights of stairs
again. Evening
accumulates under the treads of
mounting stairs.”
...
“He turns his face to her, walk unbroken.
Her face
questioning turns: there is no help for each
in the other.
There are no eyes on them.
The shaft is empty of voices, all but the creaking step,
regularly in the flights recurring, preknown, dreaded that sound.
There is no face that he can see but hers.
She knows his look, and has known it for a long time.
The creak of one step is a punctuating rhyme.”
February 1, 2013
I am fascinated by Rukeyser's personal story & her engagement with history. Although her thinking in these essays is sometimes fuzzy & her use of abstractions, such as truth, reality, imagination, consciousness & even language, is often contradictory (she says one thing & then, shortly thereafter, seems to say its opposite), she repeatedly won me over when her poet's voice sneaks into her prose. For example, when she characterizes Emily Dickenson's style as one of a "slang of strictness" or when she talks about poetry as a "transfer of human energy." I loved Chapter Twelve, "Out of Childhood," which is composed of impressionistic vignettes (film stills)that summarize & encapsulate the author's childhood & coming to maturity, both as a person & a writer. Compressed, evocative & vastly informative in their succinctness. Worth the price of the book.
February 9, 2018
The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser is an exploration of poetry-its relationship to the visual and performing arts, its role in our personal lives and in the life of our culture.
Rukeyser begins her exploration by discussing the fear of poetry, a fear she attributes to all imaginative work for its ability to invite a total response reached through emotions. Convinced of the transformative power of poetry, Rukeyser argues the impact of poetry and the arts is to make us more compassionate and humane, linking us to our common humanity. She cites various poems, exploring the impact of and similarities between poetry and works in the visual and performing arts. Her vision is expansive.
Rukeyser peppers her discussion with references to poets, authors, philosophers, and scientists. She draws on events from her personal life and from her interactions with others. She argues all aspects of our culture are integrated, the only barriers being those that are artificially created. She promotes the view that even science and poetry are integrated-one bleeds into the other.
The originality of her thought is impressive. First published in 1949, so much of what she says is still relevant. But there were times when it was difficult to follow her train of thinking. The organization was choppy. She seemed to jump from one thought to another, from one reference to another, without making clear the connections or transitions. Perhaps this is reflective of so many thoughts and images and ideas bombarding her mind simultaneously that even though the connections are obvious to her, she is unable to communicate them adequately to the reader. In spite of some of these drawbacks, however, the work contained passages that were lucid, quotable, and truly inspirational.
Rukeyser defines the poem as "an exchange of energy," as "process," as one part of a dynamic triadic relationship between the poet and the reader. She redefines the reader as a "witness," since the term ". . . includes the act of seeing or knowing by personal experience, as well as the act of giving evidence." Her final chapters are particularly compelling. In language breathless with anticipation, she retraces her experience with the images and thoughts that went into the process of writing a poem. And bordering on lyricism is the chapter containing fleeting images of her childhood memories.
There are many quotable and inspiring passages in the work, including this passage that is perhaps one of the most salient:
The tendency of art and religion, and the tendency of poetic meaning, is toward the most human. It is a further humanity we are trying to achieve, at our most conscious, and to communicate.
The thinning out of our response is the weakness that leads to mechanical aggression. It is the weakness turning us inward to devour our own humanity, and outward only to sell and kill nature and each other.
Words to savor. Words to remember. Words to live by.
Recommended.
Rukeyser begins her exploration by discussing the fear of poetry, a fear she attributes to all imaginative work for its ability to invite a total response reached through emotions. Convinced of the transformative power of poetry, Rukeyser argues the impact of poetry and the arts is to make us more compassionate and humane, linking us to our common humanity. She cites various poems, exploring the impact of and similarities between poetry and works in the visual and performing arts. Her vision is expansive.
Rukeyser peppers her discussion with references to poets, authors, philosophers, and scientists. She draws on events from her personal life and from her interactions with others. She argues all aspects of our culture are integrated, the only barriers being those that are artificially created. She promotes the view that even science and poetry are integrated-one bleeds into the other.
The originality of her thought is impressive. First published in 1949, so much of what she says is still relevant. But there were times when it was difficult to follow her train of thinking. The organization was choppy. She seemed to jump from one thought to another, from one reference to another, without making clear the connections or transitions. Perhaps this is reflective of so many thoughts and images and ideas bombarding her mind simultaneously that even though the connections are obvious to her, she is unable to communicate them adequately to the reader. In spite of some of these drawbacks, however, the work contained passages that were lucid, quotable, and truly inspirational.
Rukeyser defines the poem as "an exchange of energy," as "process," as one part of a dynamic triadic relationship between the poet and the reader. She redefines the reader as a "witness," since the term ". . . includes the act of seeing or knowing by personal experience, as well as the act of giving evidence." Her final chapters are particularly compelling. In language breathless with anticipation, she retraces her experience with the images and thoughts that went into the process of writing a poem. And bordering on lyricism is the chapter containing fleeting images of her childhood memories.
There are many quotable and inspiring passages in the work, including this passage that is perhaps one of the most salient:
The tendency of art and religion, and the tendency of poetic meaning, is toward the most human. It is a further humanity we are trying to achieve, at our most conscious, and to communicate.
The thinning out of our response is the weakness that leads to mechanical aggression. It is the weakness turning us inward to devour our own humanity, and outward only to sell and kill nature and each other.
Words to savor. Words to remember. Words to live by.
Recommended.
October 31, 2021
This started off strong and then petered out into incomprehensibility. I ended up skimming most of the last half. It feels like a series of unfinished and barely-clothed essays. I really wanted her to extend out her thoughts from the start about how the public distaste for poetry can be traced back to our unwillingness to confront difficult emotions like fear and grief. Or, I'd have loved a deeper look at her claim that art prepares us for thought.
I bought this book because I read about how much of an anti-war activist Rukeyser was, and I wanted to delve more into that through the lens of poetry. I wanted to see how much things had changed (or not) in our time compared to hers.
Anyway, that's not what I got. So, meh.
I bought this book because I read about how much of an anti-war activist Rukeyser was, and I wanted to delve more into that through the lens of poetry. I wanted to see how much things had changed (or not) in our time compared to hers.
Anyway, that's not what I got. So, meh.
November 21, 2008
I was not a good reader of this book, maybe because it's out of a time that I know little about. A lot of the cultural references Rukeyser makes mean little to me, so I felt that I needed a key to unlock the code. Reading it was like wading through deep water and occasionally encountering the buoy of a quotable quote. Reading it also made me very sad because, in 1949, Rukeyser seemed to have great hopes for a world transformed by art and poetry. Fifty years on, engaged in what George W. Bush called "the first war of the twenty-first century," that hope looks pretty well crushed.
September 16, 2020
When I was in grad school in English during the 1970s, I took a terrific seminar on T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams from the master teacher Charles Sanders. The ways of thinking about poetry we encountered there have stayed with me for a half century and I'm glad they've been in my mix. But having finally read Rukeyser's Life of Poetry--I know here poetry fairly well--I'm really wishing I had these phrasings to go along with the guys (as well as Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison on jazz and the blues elements of poetry). Rukeyser writes brilliantly about the ways poetry is a three-part interaction between the poet as she existed at the moment she finished the poem, the poem on the page, and crucially, the "witness"--a term she strongly and convincingly prefers to audience or reader. Crucial to anyone aspiring to understand the American or modern traditions and/or simply to bear witness to poetry's continuing necessity.
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June 15, 2023Absolutely beautiful this changed me
July 8, 2025
There were a few moments where Rukeyser got into the weeds a little bit but truly, I wish I loved anything or believed in anything the way Rukeyser loves/believes in poetry.
August 19, 2021
Essential reading for poets and readers of poetry.
March 13, 2008
I finished reading this book on the second anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001. In those two years, it felt to me that our country was in a constant state of war, with each other and with the world. Muriel Rukeyser wrote the first edition of this book following the end of World War II, in the wake of our country's controversial choice to use nuclear bombs to end the war with Japan. The poignancy of this parallel informed and haunted my reading of this passionately intelligent treatise on the peaceful effects poetry could have in our culture. As I read it, at first I was frustrated by how little progress has been made since 1949 to bring poetry out into the broader culture. Also, it reminded me of the vast ground that poetry has covered. But mostly, it made me realize that poets have to keep saying these things until people listen. And they aren't listening yet, as made abundantly clear in this case, since so much of what Rukeyser points out in this book is still relevant today.
August 3, 2013
I am so glad I read this. This book was published in 1949, and in response to what she was saying, advocating, complaining about, at that time made me fervently wish I could have had conversations with her during the 1960's & 1970's as so much of what bothered her was dramatically evolving. I sat talking out loud to this book. I like her concept of, in my words, her concept of the whole. Nothing is separated, everything is integrated. She decided to refer to readers as witnesses instead of readers. Even though she explains that eventually I couldn't really concur. Many conversations to be had about her ideas.
Not all of her essays, in the way she organizes her writing are understandable, at least to me.
Not all of her essays, in the way she organizes her writing are understandable, at least to me.
August 27, 2016
This is one of those serious books that I read quickly -- not a good combination. And I suppose, given the many 5-stars, it shows just how shallow I am when it comes to poetry. Yep. Kept thinking it was like a textbook. Or criticism. Rough, meet sailing. But I DID love her brief chapter toward the end -- the one with childhood memories written in a poetic way. Rukeyser takes her poetry straight up and on the rocks. Seriously. Alas, more seriously than I do....
July 19, 2024
absolutely loved this!! truly felt like I was reading my own thoughts, but there were also so many nuggets of wisdom
February 21, 2019
I have come late to Rukeyser's poetry. I am drawn to it, but yet it seems to open itself reluctantly to me. I felt the same way about this book -- I had to learn how to read it as I was reading it.
In many ways, it works like a poem -- placing ideas and incidents side by side and asking the reader to make the connections. The jumps. Asking the reader to come to the same place as the author, a place of belief in the importance and centrality of the process of poetry. "The work is what we wanted, and the process." Yes, there are chapters that are critical summaries of the art and the arts in that period right after WWII -- and those are interesting and quirky (in the best sense of that word).
But at the end Rukeyser comes to an incredible statement of her belief in poetry. The artistic process breaks down barriers and opens the door for unity and a profound peace. "If we believe in the unity and multiplicity of the world, if we believe in the unity and multiplicity of man, then we believe too in the unity and multiplicity of imagination. And we speak across the barriers, many to many." This seems perhaps even more relevant to discussions now, 70 years after she published those sentences. And that is almost at the very end of the book. For most of the 200 pages before that she has, in her own way, been preparing us for that conclusion.
I will have to return to this book, but I will do it after I have spent a lot more time with her poems.
In many ways, it works like a poem -- placing ideas and incidents side by side and asking the reader to make the connections. The jumps. Asking the reader to come to the same place as the author, a place of belief in the importance and centrality of the process of poetry. "The work is what we wanted, and the process." Yes, there are chapters that are critical summaries of the art and the arts in that period right after WWII -- and those are interesting and quirky (in the best sense of that word).
But at the end Rukeyser comes to an incredible statement of her belief in poetry. The artistic process breaks down barriers and opens the door for unity and a profound peace. "If we believe in the unity and multiplicity of the world, if we believe in the unity and multiplicity of man, then we believe too in the unity and multiplicity of imagination. And we speak across the barriers, many to many." This seems perhaps even more relevant to discussions now, 70 years after she published those sentences. And that is almost at the very end of the book. For most of the 200 pages before that she has, in her own way, been preparing us for that conclusion.
I will have to return to this book, but I will do it after I have spent a lot more time with her poems.
March 26, 2020
Loved this rather strange book on the value of poetry. It's underlying premise is very similar to Roger Fry's approach to art in Vision & Design, examining the shape of art in tandem with the emotional response it produces in us. It is itself a kind of poetry, which makes it surprisingly easy to read, relying on a system of interweaving language to convey its point, rather than on a more robust academic approach. This does have its downsides, however, every now and then the point becomes slightly to vague and blurry to be fully realised and you are left to squint at whatever point is being made in the far off horizon, never quite making it out. Worse yet are Rukeyser's attempts to apply psychoanalysis to art, attempting to use her rather flimsy understanding of psychology to attach some very fibrous threads linking it to poetry; it is the least convincing part of the entire book. In spite of these faults, it is, for the most part, a lucid and engaging book that encourages the "total response" that Rukeyser attributes to poetry.
January 3, 2021
Rukeyser's father was a building contractor and she grew up visiting large construction sites, marvelling at the flesh and bones of the city as work in progress. This experience informs her poetry in ways that make her - for my purposes - a must read "archi-poet". In one remarkable passage, she recalls watching the construction of the George Washington bridge, and says it empowered her to know such poetry is possible.
March 4, 2025
Not my personal favorite but when she's focused on poetry I quite enjoyed her reflections. The rest was good too but seemed to me to be digressions that were difficult to bring back to the subject at hand.
September 8, 2018
So much to love! One to savor.
A book to own to read over and over.
Great joy in this book.
A book to own to read over and over.
Great joy in this book.
February 4, 2019
It was an interesting read. It gave one hope for the future of poetry in todays world.
Read
August 29, 2022Poetry as art, mystery, life.
Most of the pages are now full of red ink.
Most of the pages are now full of red ink.
November 27, 2025
I'm a big Rukeyser fan, but this book on poetry as a field of interest was hard-going for me. Rukeyser's prose style confused me, but I liked the short bits at the end of the book.
January 23, 2026
Wonderful, 7 stars! What an intellect Muriel Rukeyser had … to think she wrote this in 1949!
April 12, 2008
Overall I enjoyed Rukeyser's conversational, confessional, impassioned writing about poetry. She's not afraid to make big pronouncements such as: "Many of our poems are... monuments. They offer the truths of outrage and the truths of possibility" (66) and "Punctuation is biological" (117) and "If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day" (159).
I thoroughly enjoyed the first two sections of the book, titled "Resistances" and "Backgrounds and Sources," which dealt respectively with the places of poetry in society - specifically a society that wages wars - and with critical analysis of Melville and Whitman. The book was published in 1949, and Rukeyser is understandably obsessed with the concepts of war and peace. Imagination, the arts, poetry, seem to be her refuge and solution to the problem of peace as not merely the absence of war, but as stillness and completeness. (A theme she returns to in the closing chapters of the work.) The works of Melville and Whitman specifically illuminate for her the interplay of good and evil and the ways in which they cannot and should not be separated in human thought.
Section three, on the "uses" of poetry, completely broke down for me. Rukeyser discusses other art forms - touching on plays, music, and dance, but focusing the bulk of her attention on film, an industry in which she worked as an editor. The material here felt dated in a way that her opinions on society, art, and war do not; and perhaps the very contemporaryness of her other statements creates a greater gulf to overcome. I could happily have skipped this entire chunk of book and not really missed much aside from a historical perspective.
The final section reiterates much of the material before it, but significantly (finally!) adds a definition of poetry. I was surprised that it took 169 pages to reach, but I did find her definition resonate and flexible. "A poem is an imaginary work, living in time, indicated in language. It is and it expresses; it allows us to express. The fact that it extends in time means that motion is internal to the poem." This seems to sum up nicely some of the base components that everyone could agree upon ("language" and expressiveness) and adds what has always seemed to me to be a necessary factor in creating a poem, the concept of "motion" within the work.
Rukeyser also melds the concepts of science and poetry in this section, a pairing that intrigues me as well. She recognizes what has become a better-known concept 50+ years later, that theoretical science and mathematics share much of the same intangible qualities as poetry, that the theoretical thinker is kin to the poet.
Ultimately, what Rukeyser believes in is in "the unity of the imagination" (163) - a concept she applies universally to science, religion, society, and poetry. Her perspective is a hopeful and optimistic one, and one that still seems somehow attainable and yet only in some future time. She strangely attacks poets who treat the poem as an object (I've yet to entirely figure out what she means by that, except perhaps that she refers to poems that deal more with concrete imagery, whose emotional landscape is merely implied or must be entirely supplied by the reader). She rejects those who "sell out" by not exploring "relationships" and "possibility" (208). I find myself sympathizing with her ideals, although I am put off by her narrow attitude towards who she seems to consider a 'real' poet.
Despite agreeing with many of Rukeyser's ideas and genuinely liking her authorial voice, I was not equally interested in all parts of the book. Her dated discussions of early 20th century art, film especially, did not engage me, and I found her dismissals of other poets as sell outs troubling. Additionally, the entire work takes as its foundation the idea that everyone should be invested in poetry (although she acknowledges from the get-go that there is a "hatred to poetry" (9), it does not seem to inform her conclustions or attitudes), which lends it a quality of perhaps preaching to the choir -- I'm not entirely sure that a book which takes nearly its entire length to arrive at a definition of poetry will appeal to or be read by anyone who is not already a poet. However, I find her definition of poetry wonderfully expansive, able to encompass multiple forms and highlighting elements that I do not think poetry should do without. Her idealism, particularly following her experiences with wars and social injustices, moves me and I am particularly touched by her discussions of unity and peace. Rukeyser is at her best when tackling big concepts with her uplifting sense of possibility.
I thoroughly enjoyed the first two sections of the book, titled "Resistances" and "Backgrounds and Sources," which dealt respectively with the places of poetry in society - specifically a society that wages wars - and with critical analysis of Melville and Whitman. The book was published in 1949, and Rukeyser is understandably obsessed with the concepts of war and peace. Imagination, the arts, poetry, seem to be her refuge and solution to the problem of peace as not merely the absence of war, but as stillness and completeness. (A theme she returns to in the closing chapters of the work.) The works of Melville and Whitman specifically illuminate for her the interplay of good and evil and the ways in which they cannot and should not be separated in human thought.
Section three, on the "uses" of poetry, completely broke down for me. Rukeyser discusses other art forms - touching on plays, music, and dance, but focusing the bulk of her attention on film, an industry in which she worked as an editor. The material here felt dated in a way that her opinions on society, art, and war do not; and perhaps the very contemporaryness of her other statements creates a greater gulf to overcome. I could happily have skipped this entire chunk of book and not really missed much aside from a historical perspective.
The final section reiterates much of the material before it, but significantly (finally!) adds a definition of poetry. I was surprised that it took 169 pages to reach, but I did find her definition resonate and flexible. "A poem is an imaginary work, living in time, indicated in language. It is and it expresses; it allows us to express. The fact that it extends in time means that motion is internal to the poem." This seems to sum up nicely some of the base components that everyone could agree upon ("language" and expressiveness) and adds what has always seemed to me to be a necessary factor in creating a poem, the concept of "motion" within the work.
Rukeyser also melds the concepts of science and poetry in this section, a pairing that intrigues me as well. She recognizes what has become a better-known concept 50+ years later, that theoretical science and mathematics share much of the same intangible qualities as poetry, that the theoretical thinker is kin to the poet.
Ultimately, what Rukeyser believes in is in "the unity of the imagination" (163) - a concept she applies universally to science, religion, society, and poetry. Her perspective is a hopeful and optimistic one, and one that still seems somehow attainable and yet only in some future time. She strangely attacks poets who treat the poem as an object (I've yet to entirely figure out what she means by that, except perhaps that she refers to poems that deal more with concrete imagery, whose emotional landscape is merely implied or must be entirely supplied by the reader). She rejects those who "sell out" by not exploring "relationships" and "possibility" (208). I find myself sympathizing with her ideals, although I am put off by her narrow attitude towards who she seems to consider a 'real' poet.
Despite agreeing with many of Rukeyser's ideas and genuinely liking her authorial voice, I was not equally interested in all parts of the book. Her dated discussions of early 20th century art, film especially, did not engage me, and I found her dismissals of other poets as sell outs troubling. Additionally, the entire work takes as its foundation the idea that everyone should be invested in poetry (although she acknowledges from the get-go that there is a "hatred to poetry" (9), it does not seem to inform her conclustions or attitudes), which lends it a quality of perhaps preaching to the choir -- I'm not entirely sure that a book which takes nearly its entire length to arrive at a definition of poetry will appeal to or be read by anyone who is not already a poet. However, I find her definition of poetry wonderfully expansive, able to encompass multiple forms and highlighting elements that I do not think poetry should do without. Her idealism, particularly following her experiences with wars and social injustices, moves me and I am particularly touched by her discussions of unity and peace. Rukeyser is at her best when tackling big concepts with her uplifting sense of possibility.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 1, 2013
I wanted to love this book. I really like Rukeyser's poetry, and she was a boundary-busting activist who did not separate that activism from her creative work. There were some great moments in these essays - "...remember what happened to you when you came to your poem, any poem whose truth overcame all inertia in you at that moment, so that your slow mortality took its proper place, and before it the light of a new awareness was not something new, but something you *recognized* "(35) - I just had difficulty getting on board with the whole "fear of poetry" concept. I know these essays were originally lectures; perhaps they didn't translate as well on the page. And my mind kept wandering, and I kept losing my place. I don't know. Maybe I'll try the book again in a few years, and it'll 'click' - at this point, I am moving on.
November 19, 2014
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The Life of Poetry is an interdisciplinary book that explores American culture. This collection of essays addresses Americans' fear of feeling and how that fear contributes to the devaluation of the arts, especially poetry, in the United States. Through discussions of history, science, film, literature, mathematics, the visual arts, dance, theater, and politics, Rukeyser speaks to Americans who are intimidated or bored by poetry; she also speaks to those who love it. At the center of this book is Rukeyser's belief that a culture is more compassionate and humane when it embraces, uses, and lives with poetry and the arts.
The Life of Poetry is an interdisciplinary book that explores American culture. This collection of essays addresses Americans' fear of feeling and how that fear contributes to the devaluation of the arts, especially poetry, in the United States. Through discussions of history, science, film, literature, mathematics, the visual arts, dance, theater, and politics, Rukeyser speaks to Americans who are intimidated or bored by poetry; she also speaks to those who love it. At the center of this book is Rukeyser's belief that a culture is more compassionate and humane when it embraces, uses, and lives with poetry and the arts.
October 26, 2008
Rukeyser's arguments for the significance of poetry are full of detours and asides, which can make this a difficult read. Much of her views on poetry's possibilities are very closely tied to her interest in the sciences, which can be distracting (although her criticisms of the rigidity of method that emerges in science and the humanities resonates). The detours and asides, though, are often quite wonderful, as are her conclusions about the reader not just as audience, but witness, and the poem as a constant/constrained striving towards humanity.
November 10, 2007
When I was 15 I started reading this in the bathtub and stayed in there until I got pruney and the water turned cold and then slowly drained out, and I really felt that she had the right idea about the anti-touch people and the anti-poetry people and how they ruin everything and the fear of poetry is the fear. The ideaology didn't hold up very well, and I hold that against this book, maybe unfairly.
June 20, 2015
"Anyone dealing with poetry and the love of poetry must deal, then, with the hatred of poetry, and perhaps even more with the indifference...If you ask your friends about it, you will find that there are a few answers, repeated by everyone. One is that the friend has not the time for poetry. This is a curious choice, since poetry, of all the arts that live in time--music, theater, film, writing--is the briefest, the most compact."
September 1, 2017
I really liked her discussion on what is underlying the general complaint of a person who says "I don't get/don't like poetry." I liked when she talked about society and the arts more than the poem-chapter on her childhood she wrote at the end. The last page has given me one of my favorite epigraphs.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews