The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser was
published as part of her 1938 volume U.S. 1.
The poem, which is probably the most ambitious and least
understood work of Depression-era American verse,
commemorates the worst industrial accident in U.S. history,
the Gauley Tunnel tragedy. In this terrible disaster, an
undetermined number of men—likely somewhere between 700 and
800—died of acute silicosis, a lung disorder caused by
prolonged inhalation of silica dust, after working on a
tunnel project in Fayette County, West Virginia, in the
early 1930s.
After many years of relative neglect, The Book of the
Dead has recently returned to print and has become the
subject of critical attention. In Muriel Rukeyser’s “The
Book of the Dead,” Tim Dayton continues that study by
characterizing the literary and political world of Rukeyser
at the time she wrote The Book of the Dead.
Rukeyser’s poem clearly emerges from 1930s radicalism, as
well as from Rukeyser’s deeply felt calling to poetry.
After describing the world from which the poem emerged,
Dayton sets up the fundamental factual matters with which
the poem is concerned, detailing the circumstances of the
Gauley Tunnel tragedy, and establishes a framework derived
from the classical tripartite division of the genres—epic,
lyric, and dramatic. Through this framework, he sees
Rukeyser presenting a multifaceted reflection upon the
significance, particularly the historical significance, of
the Gauley Tunnel tragedy. For Rukeyser, that disaster was
the emblem of a history in which those who do the work of
the world are denied control of the vast powers they bring
into being.
Dayton also studies the critical reception of The Book
of the Dead and determines that while the contemporary
response was mixed, most reviewers felt that Rukeyser had
certainly attempted something of value and significance. He
pays particular attention to John Wheelwright’s critical
review and to the defenses of Rukeyser launched in the
1980s and 1990s by Louise Kertesz and Walter Kalaidjian.
The author also examines the relationship between Marxism
as a theory of history governing The Book of the
Dead and the poem itself, which presents a vision of
history.
Based upon primary scholarship in Rukeyser’s papers, a
close reading of the poem, and Marxist theory, Muriel
Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead” offers a
comprehensive and compelling analysis of The Book of the
Dead and will likely remain the definitive work on this
poem.