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218 x 140 mm. (8 5/8 x 5 1/2"). x, 113, [1] pp., [1] leaf. Publisher's navy blue buckram, front cover gilt with the author's initials, spine lettered in gilt. In original dust jacket. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the front free endpaper: "The night is covered with signs. / for Paul Kresh, / who fought and bled for Akiba,/ and more besides - with long affection/ Muriel./ May 1968." Sam Huber, "Muriel Rukeyser, Mother of Everyone," Paris Review, 2018. Dust jacket spine with mild sunning, extremities very slightly worn; internally pristine. With a warm personal inscription from the author to an important advocate of her work, this is an excellent copy of one of Muriel Rukeyser's most influential collections. Poet, writer, and political activist Rukeyser (1913-80) composed "The Speed of Darkness" at a time of personal and political upheaval. She had suffered a stroke four years previously, and was adjusting to her life afterward while serving as president of PEN America (an organization promoting freedom of expression and human rights through literature), campaigning for feminist causes, and protesting against the Vietnam War. Divided into five sections ("Clues," "Games," "The Outer Banks," "Lives," and "The Speed of Darkness"), the present group of poems has given us some of Rukeyser's most-quoted lines, such as the verse from the title work: "The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms." While growing out of the political situation in which they are written, many of these poems have evergreen resonance: Sam Huber wrote in "The Paris Review" in 2018 about the resurgence of popularity of "Poem," first published in the present collection: "In moments of desperation, a favorite poem has resurfaced lately, sometimes on Twitter and sometimes in memory. . . 'Poem' has become a vehicle for anti-Trump sentiment, an equivocal fate for any artifact but one Rukeyser would not likely have chafed against. . . the vitality of her art depends on its responsiveness to the world it enters." The present copy contains a lengthy inscription by the author to a person of great importance in her career. Author, critic, and editor Paul Kresh (1919-97) was Rukeyser's longtime friend and an advocate for her writing as well as a person known for recording poets--including our author--reading their own works. The poem "Akiba," which appears in this collection, is a reflection on the life of Rabbi Akiba (also Akiva), the first-century scholar and sage. The poem was first published by Kresh in "American Judaism" magazine, of which he was editor, and was later included in his 1967 anthology "American Judaism Reader" before its inclusion in the present volume. Our copy was later part of the library of Belgian-American poet, translator, and editor Laure-Anne Bosselaar (b. 1943) and her husband Kurt Brown (1944-2013), also a prolific poet and editor of anthologies, as well as the founder and first director of the Aspen Writer's Conference. The present work is not difficult to locate for sale, but we could not find in present dealer listings or in RBH any signed copy (let alone to a significant inscribee).
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