Customer Reviews (1)

beautiful populist voice
I'd only just barely heard of Muriel Rukeyser before running across this volume in my mother's book collection.Half of this volume (which is, by the way, 147 pages, not 5 as listed) is her Book of the Dead, a spare hymn in free verse to poor workers dead and dying of silicosis:

In tunnel No. 1 it ran 97-99% pure silica.
The contractors
knowing pure silica
30 years' experience
must have known danger for every man
neglected to provide the workmen with any safety device...
--from Statement: Philippa Allen

This section is free verse, much of it in the words of the sick workers, and very reminiscent of William Carlos Williams or Carl Sandburg.

The second section, Night-Music, has varied subjects and rhyme schemes.Here is a taste of Boy With His Hair Cut Short, in which a young man's sister trims his hair to help him look for work:
Sunday shuts down on this twentieth-century evening.
The L passes.Twilight and bulb define
the brown room, the overstuffed plum sofa,
the boy, and the girl's thin hands above his head.
A neighbor radio sings stocks, news, serenade.

I don't know why Ms. Rukeyser is not as well-known as other poets of her day, with the beautifully solemn word-sounds and the serious and important thoughts her work embodies.
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