126
PARTISAN REVIEW
like this was sought out by the
OWl for a responsible post, which
she soon resigned, sick at heart be–
cause the war was increasingly
"unconscious," and because our
business and political leaders were
more concerned with
stifling
the
meanings and values involved than
they were with educating the
American people to the real issues
of the struggle. And finally-it is
true that she has received two
awards and a Guggenheim Fellow–
ship.
In these acknowledgments of
truth I have patiently summarized,
one by one, the very points which
this unspeakable attack has used to
slur Miss Rukeyser-indicating by
way of tone and sneering innuen–
do, misleading quotations and un–
supported "critical" descriptions of
her style, that she is intellectually
dishonest, opportunistically looking
for a "band-wagon" to jump onto,
and waiting for the post of Libra–
rian of Congress. It is astonishing,
and in fact sickening, that a maga–
zine devoted to politics
and
cul–
ture, the social
and
the spiritual,
freedom from party tyranny
and
political action that is meaningful
in human terms (do I distort your
policy?) should permit this vicious
distortion of a poet's aim and work
to appear in its columns. I should
understand the scurrilous nature of
the attack much better if
PARTISAN
REviEW were still a Trotskyist pub–
lication; but in a matter of fact,
politically, Miss Rukeyser's position
on the war is not too far from that
of Sidney Hook, whom you so
esteem. Nor has she disregarded her
"previous commitments," as the
piece puts it, any more than many
another honest intellectual who
has
changed his mind more than once
in the last ten years. What commit·
ments does a poet have, indeed,
except to the principle of creative
growth?
It is unquestionably true that
an
attitude so complex and inclusive
as the one Muriel Rukeyser has
consistently tried to express is
an
attitude which requires the greatest
discipline, poetic and intellectual,
to express
clearly.
No one who be–
lieves in the value of her work–
least of all the poet herself-would
claim that she has succeeded, as
yet, in integrating her lively energy,
curiosity, and expressive talent into
the disciplined form which ·alone
would be able to convey this at·
titude completely. But who in
this
age of small or fragmentary talents
has succeeded? Certainly Muriel
Rukeyser has not altogether failed.
Men of science, scholars, liberals,
students, men in the armed forces
-even a good many leftists of
several shades-and other intel–
ligent people who do not write for
PARTISAN·
REvmw, have been stir–
red by her verse and stimulated by
her prose; for no matter what her
faults are, as a writer, such people
know that they spring from an in–
tuition of the relationships between
orders of intellectual, emotional,
and social experience which have
been kept separate too long. And
this is what people are looking for
-this effort to link-this concern,
precisely, with "meanings."
Neither as a poet nor as a person
does Miss Rukeyser need any
im–
passioned defense in these pages.
But
PARTISAN
REVIEw might well
take itself to task, as a magazine
