SOURCE: "The Demise of the 'Delicate Prisons': The Women's Movement in Twentieth-Century American Poetry," in A Profile of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Jack Myers and David Wojahn, Southern Illinois University Press, 1991, pp. 224–53.

Daniels is an American poet, editor, and critic. In the following excerpt, which was originally published in the Cimarron Review in Summer, 1990, she identifies several feminist themes that have characterized Rukeyser's work and have made her a central figure in the women's movement in American poetry during the 1960s and 1970s.

If there is one poet who can be considered a predecessor—or matriarch—of the women's movement in twentieth-century American poetry, it is Muriel Rukeyser. Born in New York City in 1913, she published her first book, Theory of Flight, in 1935, when she was only twenty-one, a mere "girl," as the critics kept reminding each other even as they marveled at a new and provocative...