Muriel Rukeyser Centennial

with Ana Božičević, Nicole Cooley, Jan Freeman, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Kimiko Hahn, Patricia Spears Jones, Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, Christoph Keller, Joan Larkin, Jan Heller Levi, Anne Marie Macari, Donna Masini, Jena Osman, Alicia Ostriker, William L. Rukeyser and Gerald Stern

Recipient of the 1935 Yale Younger Poets Prize for Theory of Flight, Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) exploded notions of what poetry could do, pushing poetics into the realm of the political. Mentor to Alice Walker, Anne Sexton, and many others, she helped to usher in a new era for women writers through her own passionate example. Rukeyser published twenty collections of poetry, including U.S. 1 and Breaking Open, and is also celebrated for her great prose work The Life of Poetry.