Bøger af Muriel Rukeyser

A poet’s lost biography of the forgotten scientist who founded physical chemistry, shaping much of the 20th century—as well as an ingenious and expansive treatise on American creativity, character, and remembrance.Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903) was an American visionary whose work shaped a century of science by bridging classical mechanics and quantum physics. A kindly and shy bachelor who lectured at Yale in relative obscurity for more than thirty years, he single-handedly created the field of physical chemistry without ever completing a single experiment. By applying the second law of thermodynamics to chemistry, Gibbs enabled future scientists to predict what states a substance can assume and under what conditions. The implications for industry, agriculture, and warfare were vast. For this and other achievements he was hailed by Einstein as “the greatest mind in American history”—yet he remained essentially unknown. To the acclaimed poet Muriel Rukeyser, Gibbs “lived closer than any inventor, any poet, any scientific worker in pure imagina­tion to the life of the inventive and organizing spirit in America.” As such, Rukeyser’s thoroughly researched and lyrical tribute to Gibbs is much more than a traditional biography. It is an alchemical compound of philosophy, history, ethics, and literature writ large—a monolithic work of homage that is not only the story of a single thinker’s far-reaching legacy, but the story of a country, a century, a global epoch of scientific creativity that would color every realm of the human imagination and aspiration, from poetry to politics. As the iconic author and critic Maria Popova writes in her introduction, Muriel Rukeyser was remarkable American genius in her own right, who won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her debut poetry collection, Theory of Flight, in her early twenties and composed her staggering, more-than-biography of Gibbs before she was thirty. Both an ingenious celebration of the creative spark that burns through boundaries and a gorgeous ode to a forgotten man that was itself forgotten, the Marginalian Editions reissue of Willard Gibbs offers readers a transformative window into two of the most fearlessly original minds in American history.

The poetry of Muriel Rukeyser confronts the turbulent currents of 20th-century history, as it explores with depth and honesty the realms of politics, sexuality, mythic imagination, technological change, and family life. She was a social activist of unwavering commitment, a tireless experimenter who opened fresh forms and fresh subject matter in modern American poetry, and a writer who was constantly testing her own limits in a life's work of extraordinary scope."She refused to compartmentalize herself or her work," writes editor Adrienne Rich, "claiming her right to intellect and sexuality, poetry and science, Marxism and myth, activism and motherhood, theory and vision. . . . She was one of the great integrators, seeing the fragmentary world of modernity not as irretrievably broken, but in need of societal and emotional repair." This new selection provides an indispensable introduction to her adventurous and prolific work.About the American Poets ProjectElegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today's most discerning poets and critics.

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-80) was one of the most significant and influential American poets of the 20th century. Her poetry confronts the turbulent currents of modern history as it explores with depth and honesty the realms of politics, sexuality, mythic imagination, technological change and family life. This is the first UK edition of her work.

A Muriel Rukeyser Reader gathers a generous selection of poetry and prose spanning the forty-five years of Rukeyser's writing life.

"Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest." - Muriel Rukeyser, "Elegy in Joy"First published by New Directions in 1949, Muriel Rukeyser's Elegies were written over a seven years period the end of the Spanish Civil War, World War II, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the beginnings of the Cold War. Both and homage to Rilke's Duino Elegies and a spiritual reckoning that is particularly resonant today, these poems present no angelic orders, only the difficulties of living in the modern world, the depths of shipwreck, and "Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all."