When Muriel Rukeyser published U.S. 1, her second book of poems, on January 31, 1938, she was hailed as "a dramatic lyric poet" whose "images of motion, of the driven mind and body are distinctly exciting and right." Although her first book, Theory of Flight, had won the Yale Younger Poets award in 1935, critics credited U.S. 1 with dispensing with the "piling up of obscure detail" which had marked her first book. Rukeyser went on to publish 17 additional books of poems over four decades, culminating in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser in 1979. She also wrote several children's books and published translations of works by Gunnar Ekelof and Bertolt Brecht.

In both her poetry and her life, Rukeyser was deeply engaged in the cause of social justice, a path that led to multiple conflicts with authorities. Born on December 15, 1913 in New York City, Rukeyser's middle-class upbringing and college education were interrupted by her father's bankruptcy in the Great Depression. Her first foray into the political realm came in 1933, when she traveled to Scottsboro, Alabama, with college friends to report on the trial of nine young black men accused of raping two white girls. In Alabama, Rukeyser was arrested for communicating with black reporters and carrying literature of the National Students League. She later wrote about the experience in her poem "The Trial." In 1936, she traveled to Spain to report on protests against the Olympics being held in Hitler's Germany; upon her return to the US, she became active in supporting the Loyalists in the Spanish civil war. Decades later, she was arrested for protesting the Vietnam War. All of these incidents, and other themes of social protest, found their way into her writing.

Although Rukeyser never publicly identified as a lesbian, her poetry referred to love between women and railed against homophobia. Her oft-quoted words of tribute to artist Käthe Kollwitz point stunningly to the suppression of women's voices and the potential power of their liberation: "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open." Rukeyser's reflections on Jewish identity likewise suggested the pain inherent—for a Jew—in either suppressing or embracing one's essential identity. This excerpt from "To Be a Jew in the 20th Century," from "Letter to the Front," (1944) presents the challenge:

To be a Jew in the twentieth century

Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,

Wishing to be invisible, you choose

Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.

Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:

Although Rukeyser's work always had its critics, she was recognized for her talent during her lifetime. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Copernicus Prize, and the Shelley Memorial Award, and was elected president of PEN. The New York Times called her collected poems "richly rewarding." Rukeyser died on February 12, 1980.

Sources: New York Times, 31 January 1938, 27 March 1938, 13 February 1980; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1191-1193; www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rukeyser/tobeajew.htm; www.glbtq.com/literature/rukeyser_m.html.