Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) was a Jewish American writer who over the course of five decades produced a prolific, varied body of work: Fifteen collections of poems; an essential prose work about American culture, art, and poetry, The Life of Poetry; a memoir; children’s literature, plays, films, translations, and three biographies. Rukeyser is best known for her political themes since in many of her writings she responded to the events of her time, from an industrial disaster in West Virginia and the onset of the Spanish Civil War to World War II and the Shoah, as well as social, racial, and environmental injustices in the U.S. and abroad. Rukeyser was however more than a political poet. She had deep faith in poetry as a source of emotional and spiritual health, helping us imagine and strive for peace and justice. She was convinced that poetry in its many forms creates unique meeting places for readers especially needed during times of conflict and crisis, which tend to divide and isolate people. Aware of the widespread resistance to poetry, Rukeyser incorporated poetry into popular forms—such as film, radio plays, children’s books, her musical on Houdini—that might prove more engaging for audiences from different backgrounds and life experiences. At the same time, she insisted that artistic accessibility should not forfeit complexity, which she considered essential for complex times.

Louise Kertesz (1939-) was born in Ludlow, Massachusetts. She received an MA in English from Columbia University in 1963 and a PhD in American Literature from the University of Illinois in 1970. An avid reader and writer of poetry, Kertesz completed the first extensive study of Muriel Rukeyser’s wide-ranging body of work and its often dismissive reception by the literary establishment. The Poetic Vision of Muriel Rukeyser was published in 1980 by Louisiana State University, not long after Rukeyser’s death in the same year. Failing to obtain a tenure-track position at Wayne State University where she was an adjunct instructor, Kertesz, by then the mother of two girls, decided to change tracks and made a living in business reporting and writing for several weekly news magazines, among them Automotive News in Detroit, and Business Insurance and Modern Healthcare in Los Angeles. With the advent of the internet and laptops, she turned to freelance writing and editing, working as a freelance copy editor for the University of Chicago Press where she helped scholars in various disciplines improve their manuscripts. Kertesz currently lives in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.