Muriel Rukeyser was one of the twentieth century's most productive and articulate poet-activists, concerned with every social and psychological issue, from Sacco and Vanzetti through Vietnam, from the disease of silicosis in miners' lungs to the dry rot in solitary souls. She saw poets as gifted leaders with a mission to encourage all human beings to realize their greatest human potential, their full reality, and she prodded them--and herself--to do it. Though she never received wholehearted and uniform critical acclaim, at least during her lifetime, the extent, quality, seriousness, and vitality of her work assure her a permanent place in the history of modern American poetry.

Born in New York City, daughter of Lawrence B. and Myra Lyons Rukeyser, Muriel Rukeyser was educated at the Fieldston Schools, and at Vassar College and Columbia University, which she briefly attended in 1930-1932. By her own choice her life was not...