SOURCE: A review of Theory of Flight, in Partisan Review and Anvil, Vol. 3, March, 1936, pp. 29–30.

Lechlitner is an American poet and critic. In the following review, she provides a mixed assessment of Theory of Flight.

Muriel Rukeyser's poems are as a collection the most outstanding to be published within the last decade by a younger woman poet. And from a critical viewpoint, Theory of Flight should be of special significance to anyone interested in the advancement of modern poetry.

Undoubtedly the most vital (perhaps the only) contribution being made today to the art of poetry is the shift from the romantic-personal, individual consciousness to a collective, mass-identification with a universal consciousness. The true "revolutionary" poet is one who has grown beyond self-love sufficiently to discount the importance of his personal survival, and who is not only intellectually in sympathy with Marxian, or socialistic, beliefs, but is also emotionally...