Review by Kirkus Book Review
A deeply political poet, Rukeyser has always welded to her here-and-now a speculative touch, an interest in science and the ""how"" of the world that enables a poem about the Scottsboro boys, for instance, to contain a pantheon like this: ""Bruno, Copernicus, Shelley, Karl Marx: you/makers of victory for us."" The mix--leftist/metaphysical/scientific--allows her quite a lot of give; early poems tout airplane flight, deal with West Virginia miners with silicosis, grieve movingly over the Spanish Civil War (""Violent electric night! and the age spiraling past/ and the sky turning over, and the wind turning the stars""). She does long biographies of Chapman, Charles Ives, even Wendell Wilkie. The Vietnam War ""breaks open"" her dense line, consistent with her vigorous outrage and activism; there are poems, late ones, about aging, recovering from a stroke, her son's marriage. Striking lines--""Branch lifted green from the dead shock of stone""--are easier to isolate in the late poems, but always Rukeyser's work is frank, unfluttery, strong, and serious, ""grave words that fall with sweet continuance,"" and in poems like ""Then I Saw What the Calling Was"" or ""Phaneron,"" as good as you're going to read. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
