"Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest." - Muriel Rukeyser, "Elegy in Joy"

First published by New Directions in 1949, Muriel Rukeyser's Elegies were written over a seven years period the end of the Spanish Civil War, World War II, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the beginnings of the Cold War. Both and homage to Rilke's Duino Elegies and a spiritual reckoning that is particularly resonant today, these poems present no angelic orders, only the difficulties of living in the modern world, the depths of shipwreck, and "Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all."

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), described by The New York Times as "a brilliant mind fiercely at work," was the author of several collections of poetry, plays, fiction, three books of biography, children's stories, a libretto for a musical about Houdini, a book-length manifesto on poetry, and the translator of a wide range of poets, including Octavio Paz and Gunnar Ekelöf.