A Poem For Saturday

Muriel Rukeyser was born on December 15, 1913, so this year marks her centennial. While at Vassar College she founded – along with Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, and Eleanor Clark – an undergraduate literary magazine called Con Spirito. Rukeyser was in Spain as its civil war erupted, reported on its tumultuous first days, and remained politically committed all of her life, becoming president of the American Center of PEN from 1975-76. Her debut collection Theory of Flight won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1935, and subsequent works included her CollectedPoems and A Muriel Rukeyser Reader. In an introduction to Selected Poemsof Muriel Rukeyser, published in 2004, Adrienne Rich wrote:

Reading Muriel Rukeyser, writing about her as I have from time to time, I have come to feel more and more the power of her work and presence in American literature—the many kinds of lives and issues…