Poets & Writers Theater

“Last to the podium was Muriel Rukeyser, / who once wrote her own Smartian vow: ‘Never / to despise in myself what I have been / taught to despise, and never to despise the other.’” The late Galway Kinnell reads from his poem “Jubilate” and discusses the work and impact of poet Muriel Rukeyser with Sharon Olds in this Paris Press video celebrating Rukeyser’s book of essays, The Life of Poetry.

“I met Muriel at Sarah Lawrence in 1963.” In this short film produced for the 2014 Ashfield Film Festival, renowned author Alice Walker talks about her friendship with Muriel Rukeyser and her influence as a poet. “It’s because of poets like Muriel that some people do survive as whole,” says Walker.

“I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.” In this installment of the Poetry Foundation’s Ours Poetica video series, Carl Phillips reads the poem “Effort at Speech Between Two People” by Muriel Rukeyser.

“We would try by any means / To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves, / To let go the means, to wake.” In the first installment of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s AAWW at Home series in which writers share how they have been spending their time during the coronavirus pandemic, Celeste Ng talks about her current activities and concerns, and reads Muriel Rukeyser’s “Poem” from The Speed of Darkness (Vintage Books, 1968).

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?” Muriel Rukeyser asked in her poem “Käthe Kollwitz.” She answered: “The world would split open.” In this clip, Rukeyser, who died in 1980, reads the poem “In Our Time.”