The poems of Muriel Rukeyser are primordial and torrential. They pour out excitements of a large emotional force, taking in a great deal of life and giving out profound realizations of the significance of being. She has a natural force which for decades has built up monuments in words of the strong grasp on life of a strong mind….

Muriel Rukeyser for decades has consistently employed direct thrusts of strong emotion, a deep personal statement, in making her poems. It is not "confessional" poetry as we understand it in Anne Sexton, but massive awareness of large phases of existence. She has a remarkable variety of styles within her major style. She is artful and can be experimental. She belongs to the Whitman school of large confrontations and outpourings rather than to any school of the rigidly constructed poem.

Her [poems in "The Speed of Darkness"] have splendors of...