In a 1979 review of The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser, Thomas Lask wrote, “Even those who have followed Muriel Rukeyser’s career from those early volumes ‘Theory of Flight’ and ‘U.S. 1’ must be surprised at the bulk of the work, the sustained career. We have taken her a little too much for granted, perhaps because she has appeared in so many public forums in other guises: on the side of the underdog, the unjustly condemned, the defenseless, those whom life outmaneuvered. We have forgotten that we have in our midst a considerable poet, one who has remained as loyal to her craft as to her social vision, a woman for whom the writing of the poem is the verbal equivalent of the political gesture. … Poetry was never an artifice to Muriel Rukeyser. … The woman and the poet were one. She was always committed. What that commitment meant to her is the substance of her richly rewarding book.”

–Thomas Lask, New York Times, Aug. 22, 1979
Photo: Rollie McKenna