Out of Silence

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) was an American writer and activist. Her first book of poetry, Theory of Flight, was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1934. She went on to publish more than a dozen other books of poetry, including the collection U.S. 1, in which her influential narrative poem about the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, "The Book of the Dead," first appeared. In addition to her poetry, she wrote several children's books, a number of stage and screenplays, a novel, a memoir, a book of criticism, and three biographies.