Additionally, the following “Note to Gauley Bridge” (LCII) indicates that Rukeyser also developed a radio script based on the same events:
This is a documentary radio oratorio, based on materials in the U.S. Senate Hearings on the Gauley Bridge tunnel story, and on material known personally to the writer. It should be played as a Living Newspaper is, with a free, staccato movement, laced with music and sound effects.
In recent years, there has been intense scholarly interest in this poem. See essays by Stephanie Hartman, John Lowney, Leslie Ann Minot, and Shoshana Wechsler in Herzog and Kaufman, “How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?” Also see: Dayton, Muriel Rukeyser's The Book of the Dead; Kadlec, “X-Ray Testimonials in Muriel Rukeyser”; Kalaidjian, “Muriel Rukeyser and the Poetics of Specific Critique”; Shulman, “Muriel Rukeyser's The Book of the Dead”; and Thurston, “Documentary Modernism as Popular Front Poetics.”
The Road
the photographer: Rukeyser traveled to West Virginia with her photographer and Vassar College friend, Nancy Naumburg, who was interested in photography and later worked in film.
John Marshall: (1755–1835) Outdoorsman and the fourth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.
West Virginia
Thomes Batts, Robert Fallam, Thomas Wood, the Indian Perecute: Rukeyser used Arthur Fallam's A Journey from Virginia to Beyond the Appalachian Mountains (1671) along with other materials she obtained through historical research to assist her in evoking the particulars of this geographical area. Batts, Fallam, and Wood were early English explorers of West Virginia. (Batts's first name appears to have been mistyped in the poem, appearing elsewhere in multiple published documents as “Thomas.”) Fallam listed Penecute (note spelling difference from Rukeyser's usage), an Apomatack Indian, as the exploring party's guide.
Kanawha Falls: Part of the Kanawha or Great Kanawha River, located in west-central West Virginia, formed by the joining of the New and Gauley Rivers at Gauley Bridge.
Point Pleasant: West Virginia site of violent battle between settlers and American Indians in 1774.
Fort Henry: Built by the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, located on the banks of the Tennessee River.
Statement: Philippa Allen
Philippa Allen: Social worker who testified before Congress on January 16–17, 1936, as the first of twelve witnesses to speak on the Gauley Bridge incident (Hearings on H. J. Res. 449 2–33). See Rukeyser's note to “The Book of the Dead” (above) for her citation of the Congressional Hearings and recognition of Philippa Allen's investigation.
New Kanawha Power Co.: Union Carbide formed the New Kanawha Power Company in 1927 for oversight of a number of its New River projects dedicated to hydroelectric power generation. See Cherniack, The Hawk's Nest Incident.
Vanetta: West Virginian coal mining town in existence until approximately 1925; it was located approximately forty miles from Charleston. The migrant black workers recruited for the Gauley Bridge project lived predominantly in Vanetta.
George Robinson: Blues
The character of George Robinson is based on the real life George Robison (Rukeyser altered the spelling of his name) who testified as one of the miners in the abovementioned Congressional Hearings on January 20, 1936 (Hearings on H. J. Res. 449 66–74). Rukeyser intended the poem to be “a free fantasy on the blues form.” Asked how her poem is connected to social justice and equality, she stated: “George Robinson was a real man to me. He speaks for a great many things—not only the dust—much more for the men, and the women and children behind them. It seems to me that social justice comes in here as a matter of what is happening to lives—the way in which horizons are opened up, the way in which they are thrown away” (Interview by Dr. Harry T. Moore 130–31).
Juanita Tinsley
Juanita Tinsley: Local Gauley Bridge social worker who was active in the local defense committee (see Nelson 669).
The Cornfield
Heaven's My Destination: Thornton Wilder novel published in 1935, contemporaneous to the Hawk's Nest Tunnel incident.
Arthur Peyton
Arthur Peyton: Silicosis-afflicted engineer who testified in support of the miners on January 20, 1936 (Hearings on H. J. Res. 449 53–66).
Power
“Hail, holy light, offspring of Heav'n first-born,…”: See Milton's Paradise Lost, Book III, lines 1–3. This quotation, along with her reference to “Adam unparadiz'd,” reinforces Rukeyser's framing of this industrial tragedy in epic terms.
The Disease: After-Effects
Grenz rays: a type of black light, similar to but weaker than ultraviolet light, X rays, and gamma rays. Sometimes referred to as soft X rays.
Tom Mooney: (1882–1942) Socialist organizer and union activist who was convicted (and later pardoned) of murder as a result of a bomb explosion at a San Francisco parade in 1916.
Eel
Rukeyser's title plays off of the term for the “El,” the elevated subway. Underground subways were under rapid construction in New York during the period of Rukeyser's adolescence.
Ann Burlak: (1911–2002) A working-class labor organizer, primarily active in the 1930s and 1940s in the textile mills of New England. Newspapers of the time commonly referred to Burlak as the “Red Flame,” calling attention to her affiliation with the Communist Party. In her response to a letter from Rukeyser, Burlak narrates key moments in her personal history, stating that she “went to work in a silk mill at the age of 14 in Bethlehem, PA,” and that she was a “charter member” of the National Textile Workers' Union, first joining in 1928 (LCI). The letter is dated only June 14, with no year indicated. Rukeyser chose Ann Burlak as a subject for one of her “Lives” poems in TW.
Trophies
“To prevent repetition…”: This quoted material is taken directly from the report of Major General George H. Thomas, U.S. Army Corps, September 30, 1863, detailing important battles near the Tennessee River at Battle's Creek.
Three Black Women
In her 1978 CP, the title of this poem was changed from “Three Negresses” to “Three Black Women.”
Night-Music
This poem is dedicated to Marya Zaturenska (1902–1982), poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1938 for Cold Morning Sky (which she dedicated to Rukeyser). Zaturenska was married to poet Horace Gregory and, with him, coauthored A History of American Poetry, 1900–1940 (1946).
The Cruise
Rukeyser's experience in Spain where she witnessed the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War had a profound effect on her for the rest of her life. Some of that experience is suggested in this allegorical and sometimes surreal poem, which begins with a portrayal of the carefree activities of a cast of representative characters aboard a luxury-liner cruise (the captain, the barmaid, the poet, the union men, the wealthy financier). The relationships and attitudes of these individuals toward one another and the world are soon observed in a different light when fighting breaks out on shore, and no port for safe landing can be found. Later in her life, Rukeyser came to believe that the failure of the western countries to come to the aid of the Spanish Republicans was the first in a long line of twentieth-century political betrayals.
Funera plango, fulgura frango, Sabbata pango / excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos: Latin dedication often engraved on church bells to indicate their function; an old Catholic monks' hymn, chanted and commonly translated as: “Death's tale I tell, the winds dispel, ill-feeling quell, the slothful shake, the storm-clouds break, the Sabbath awake.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow also uses these words in his poem “Prologue: The Spire of Strasburg Cathedral”.
‘Free grace and dyin love,…’: Line from a traditional spiritual. See 2 Corinthians 9.
“Remember the landslide on Chartreuse”: Chartreux (alternate spelling) was the monastic home of the Carthusian order, first built by St. Bruno in 1084 and destroyed by avalanche in 1132.
Mediterranean
This poem was previously published first in New Masses (193
7), and then in booklet form by the Writers and Artists Committee as part of an effort to fund the construction of American hospitals in Spain. This booklet version varies significantly from the version published in U.S. 1. A copy of the booklet can be seen at the Berg collection, New York Public Library (reference number 79–236). On its back cover, the following appeal for funds is printed under the title “Today in Spain”: “Eight American hospitals have been established by the Medical Bureau to aid Spanish Democracy. One hundred and thirteen surgeons, nurses and ambulance drivers, with fifty-two ambulances and tons of medical equipment are saving hundreds of lives daily. What you contribute today, will receive the heartfelt thanks of a heroic people.”
See the introduction to LP for Rukeyser's prose description of her experience evacuating from Spain, including this passage: “We were on a small ship, five times past our capacity in refugees, sailing for the first port at peace. On the deck that night, people talked quietly about what they had just seen and what it might mean to the world…. Our realization was fresh and young, we had seen the parts of our lives in a new arrangement” (2–3).
1
Otto Boch: German athlete whom Rukeyser met and fell in love with in the summer of 1936 while traveling to the People's Olympiad in Barcelona, an alternative Olympics arranged to protest the rise in fascism. Rukeyser was covering the event as a journalist for the British publication Life and Letters Today. Boch stayed in Spain to fight for the International Cause and was killed in battle in 1938. While Boch and Rukeyser only knew each other for roughly six days, Rukeyser's personal correspondence repeatedly references Boch (in both the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library's Berg Collection), and various poems allude to him, attesting to the significance of this relationship in her life. See also the poems “The Book of the Dead” (US1), “Moment of Proof” (TW), “One Soldier” (BV), “Segre Song” (SD), “Voices” (BO), and “Searching/Not Searching” (BO). See also Rukeyser's “We Came for the Games” and Mariani's “‘Barcelona, 1936’—A Moment of Proof for Muriel Rukeyser.”
2
Narbo: Caesar marched to Narbo in 52 BCE. It was Rome's first overseas colony.
A Turning Wind. New York: Viking Press, 1939.
Rukeyser's original dedication read:
Elisabeth and George Marshall
Their Book
Rukeyser's original acknowledgments read:
Some of these poems have already appeared in magazines including Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Yale Review, Life and Letters To-Day, Kenyon Review, Twice a Year, Nation, New Republic, New Masses, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, Saturday Review of Literature, Southern Review.
The first through fifth elegies first appeared together in the first section of A Turning Wind.
Otherworld
The Island
Herbert…Charles…Lancelot Andrewes: Rukeyser traveled to London and Chester in June 1936, prior to her trip to Barcelona. These lines appear to describe the stained glass windows of a cloister in Chester where George Herbert (1593–1633), King Charles I (1600–1649), and Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626) were depicted together.
Noguchi
Hideyo Noguchi: (1876–1928) Japanese bacteriologist best known for his successful culturing of the agent of syphilis. The reference to “Noguchi's mother with her scalded child” is inspired by an accident suffered by Noguchi at the age of two, when he fell into a hearth fire and severely burned his left hand.
2 Lives
Rukeyser wrote a long prefatory note to A Turning Wind. This note is similar to Rukeyser's endnote in “The Book of the Dead,” in which she speaks of a projected work called U.S. 1, while having already published a book of that title. The note read:
The last section, “Lives,” is intended to stand with “The Book of the Dead” as part of a projected work, U.S. 1. The five people around whom it is written are Americans—New Englanders—whose value to our generation is very great and partly unacknowledged. The material for “Gibbs” came chiefly from the writings of Pierre Duhem, J. G. Crowther, and Josiah Willard Gibbs (to whose work much of twentieth-century physics and chemical energetics refers, including many of Einstein's researches), and to the conversation of Dr. Theodore Shedlofsky. The material for “Ryder” came chiefly from the writings of F. N. Price, Paul Rosenfeld, Walter Pach, and Marsden Hartley, on whose conversation, as well as that of William Gropper, I have drawn. The material for “Chapman” came chiefly from the writings of M.A. De Wolfe Howe, William James, Edmund Wilson, John Jay Chapman's own work, and the conversation of Earl Davidson. The material for “Ann Burlak” came chiefly from Ann Burlak herself, Waldo Frank's writings, and the conversation of Rebecca Pitts, to whom and to whose book, a study in art and democracy that is nearing completion, I am deeply indebted for ground-material throughout this book. The material for “Ives” came chiefly from the work of Charles E. Ives, Henry Cowell, and Aaron Copland, and from the conversation of Lehman Engel and Aaron Copland.
When Rukeyser reprinted this series of poems in Waterlily Fire (1962), she included a condensed version of the above in an endnote, adding that she conceived of her biographical poems as a group to include: “Gibbs,” “Ryder,” “Chapman,” “Ann Burlak,” “Ives,” “Timothy Dexter,” “Akiba,” “Käthe Kollwitz,” “Bessie Smith,” and “Boas.” She also acknowledged: “my debt to Horace Gregory;…to Ives's “Essays Before a Sonata”; to the staff of the Portsmouth Public Library, and to Richardson Wright's and John P. Marquand's books about Timothy Dexter; to Louis Finkelstein's biography, and my mother's story that we were descended from Akiba.” The poem “Suite for Lord Timothy Dexter” was published later in BW (1958), and “Akiba” and “Käthe Kollwitz” appeared in SD (1968). The first section of “Akiba,” called “The Way Out,” was published on its own in WF. To the best of our knowledge, however, Rukeyser never published “Lives” poems on Smith and Boas and did not complete her extensively researched biography project on Boas.
Gibbs
J. Willard Gibbs: (1839–1903) An American mathematician and physicist who established the basic theory for physical chemistry, Gibbs is considered the “father of thermodynamics” and “discoverer of the phase rule, what Rukeyser calls ‘one of the most celebrated and beautiful laws of theoretical physics’” (Levi 70). See Rukeyser's biography, Willard Gibbs (1942).
Ryder
Albert Pinkham Ryder: (1847–1917) An American visionary painter known especially for his landscapes and figure studies. See LP (134–35) for Rukeyser's description of Ryder's particular artistic achievement and the manner in which his paintings became “most memorable” for her.
Ann Burlak
Ann Burlak: A working-class labor organizer, primarily active in the 1930s and 1940s in the textile mills of New England; also mentioned in “The Disease: After-Effects” in US1.
Rosa: Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), political thinker and revolutionary who contributed significantly to the development of Socialist, Marxist, and Communist discourse. See also “Cats and a Cock” (TF).
Beast in View. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1944.
Rukeyser's original acknowledgments read:
I thank the following, who first published some of the poems of this book: Decision, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Accent, New Poems 1940, Horizon, Life and Letters To-Day, Twice a Year, The American Scholar, Harper's Bazaar, New Poems 1942, Tomorrow, New Poems 1943, The Manitoban (of Winnipeg), Rueca (of Mexico, D.F.) and Mr. Norman Holmes Pearson; Mr. Louis Untermeyer, editor of Modern American Poetry; Mr. Lee Ault and Mr. Rudolf C. von Ripper.
The sixth through ninth elegies first appeared together as the fourth section of BV, after “The Soul and Body of John Brown.” A number of poems in this volume have specific dates recorded at their conclusions. In her final note page for this collection, Rukeyser commented that she had “dated several poems in the first section, and one elegy (the sixth), to indicate with particularity their time of writing during the months just before this country entered the war.�
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One Soldier
This poem both addresses and refers to Otto Boch, the German athlete whom Rukeyser met in 1936. See the annotation to “The Book of the Dead” (US1).
Ajanta
Rukeyser's endnote in BV reads, “The title ‘Ajanta’ refers to the caves of that name in India, on whose walls appear the great frescoes, with their religious analogy between space and the space of the body, and their acceptance of reality which may be filled with creation” (98). In SP Rukeyser included a footnote explaining that the frescoes were created by “painter-monks” and that the religious analogy “involves an acceptance of reality which defines art as other than the changing of reality, the looking-through the wall of Western painting. The wall is accepted; the air, the space between the walls and the observer, is filled with creation.”
Nelson and Kaufman contribute further: “The Ajanta caves in India are a series of twenty-nine Buddhist cave-temples and monasteries cut into cliffs in the north, near Ajanta, Maharashtra. Built over several centuries beginning in the second century BC, they were abandoned in the seventh century and rediscovered in 1819. Most of the cave walls have large-scale tempura murals depicting the lives of the Buddha, while the ceilings are decorated with flowers and animals. The compositions are rhythmic, naturalistic, and generally drawn with soft, curving lines. Rukeyser had not seen the caves themselves, basing her descriptions, as in ‘Les Tendresses Bestiales,’ on a large portfolio of reproductions. In her sequence the caves are not only a space for collective narrative representation but also a space of the body and of the self.” See also LP 153–55, and Nayar, “Transformations: Muriel Rukeyser's ‘Ajanta’” (1994).
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 58
