In the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser, as represented in three volumes published between 1930 and 1939, it is possible to trace the history of a movement in American letters that was at the same time literary and political. Since her range is wide, and her methods pliable, she has expressed in these volumes the sentiments of many in her generation, and has suggested certain influences that reshaped and ultimately transformed them. (p. 554)

One of the most interesting phases of the transformation of the social poet in years of stress is the change in his use of language. In the case of Muriel Rukeyser, it moves from that of simple declarative exhortation, in the common phrases of the city man, to that of a gnarled, intellectual, almost private observation. In her earlier usage, images are apt to be simple and few; the whole approach is apt to be through the medium...