Friday from the Archives: “The Outer Banks” Poems of Muriel Rukeyser and W.D. Ehrhart
introduced and annotated by Martin Kich in NCLR 2005
For NC teachers of poetry, this duo of poems would make an excellent addition to your classroom. Kich includes biographical and career information for both poets and then annotates the similarities and differences between the two pieces.
Appropriately included in our “Outer Banks Writing” issue, but, surprisingly, neither author is from the OBX. Kich wrote, “Born in 1913 [in New York City], Muriel Rukeyser came of age during the economic and social calamity of the Great Depression. Her political attitudes were shaped by the perception that the pervasive cultural and literary endorsement of speculative capitalism represented a spiritual bankruptcy that posed a greater threat to American ideals than any commercial failures.”
“In contrast,” Kich continues, “W.D. Ehrhart, who was born in 1948 [in Roaring Spring, PA], is now in the mature stage of his career that Rukeyser had entered into in the 1960s. In the 1970s, he established himself as one of the leading poets of the Vietnam generation, contributing to a number of noteworthy anthologies and editing two that were very widely read: Carrying the Darkness: American Indochina – the Poetry of the Vietnam War (1985) and Unaccustomed Mercy: Soldier Poets of the Vietnam War (1989).”
“That both of these poets would write seemingly atypical works on the same topic, the Outer Banks, is a coincidence made all the more strange by the critical silence on the resulting poems.” Kich goes on to correct that by providing a detailed analysis of both poems, both printed in full in the issue. He wrote about Rukeyser’s, “But “The Outer Banks” is not just a “nature” poem. In its treatment of the human history of the region and in its sense of the region as a margin where the seemingly impossible becomes possible, the poem touches on many of the themes common… in Rukeyser’s whole body of work.”
Kich ended the analysis with “even though Ehrhart’s approach is more documentary than Rukeyser’s, the poems end on surprisingly similar notes. The historical challenges that the landscape of the Outer Banks have posed to their inhabitants suggest to the visiting poet an extended metaphor for the human predicament, for the need to strike a balance between our engagement with issues of immediate interest and our exploration of the more profound questions of existence.”
Reminder: we are still accepting scholarly writing and interviews with current and former military affiliated NC authors! Read the call for submissions, which ends August 31.
Read the entire essay on Gale Cengage and pick up a 2005 issue today!
