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Muriel Rukeyser

Muriel Rukeyser published steadily and prolifically between 1935 and 1980. Known for her strong and expansive social conscience, she wrote about the Spanish Civil War, the trial of the Scottsboro Boys, anti-Semitism,

Soul and Body of John Brown, The

by Muriel Rukeyser (1913–80)

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16

 His life is in the body of the living. 
 When they hanged him the first time, his image leaped 
 into the blackened air. His grave was the floating faces 
 of the crowd, and he refusing them release 
 rose open-eyed in autumn, a fanatic 
 beacon of fierceness leaping to meet them there, 
 match the white prophets of the storm, 
 the streaming meteors of the war. 
 Dreaming Ezekiel, threaten me alive! 

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Poets Book of Days

June 25

Charles Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal was published this day in 1857. Six of the work's most controversial poems were suppressed in France until 1949.

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