Muriel Rukeyser is the best poet of her exact generation. (p. xi)

It is curious to read [of] the attacks on Muriel Rukeyser by what were, in fact, political opponents, for her lack of "depth." Purely as a thinker, she is certainly more profound than anyone else in her generation. It's just that her thoughts were not their thoughts. She is one of the most important writers of the Left of her time, and now with the death of Neruda and the ever-increasing sterility of Louis Aragon, she ranks very high indeed. Unlike the other writers of the Left, she never paid much, if any, attention to the corkscrew twists of the party line. So the critics of the Left alternately embraced and damned her…. She does not have an ideology grafted into her head like these devices they attach to the brains of monkeys. She has a...