From Muriel Rukeyser's first volume of poems, "Theory of Flight" …, to her most recent, "Waterlily Fire" …, is a span of twenty-seven years and nine books, the years among the most crucial in the history of the American republic and the books among the most indicative in the history of contemporary American poetry. They animate each other, the years and the books, for the electric vitality of Miss Rukeyser's art stems partially from the tightness with which her poems are plugged into the socket of American experience, and they, in turn, offer the sort of interpretive comment upon that experience which demonstrates that poets do, after all, have something significant to tell us about ourselves.

But there is more to celebrate here than content. One reason why her works have maintained … a certain centrality and stability is that her techniques, her verbal strategies, are at once a statement and...