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The Book of the Dead is a long narrative poem written by Muriel Rukeyser, appearing in her collection US 1. Published in 1938, the poem deals with the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, also known as the Gauley Tunnel Tragedy, in which predominately poor, migrant mine workers in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia succumbed to death caused by the ...
Written in response to the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel disaster of 1931 in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, The Book of the Dead is an important part of West Virginia’s cultural heritage and a powerful account of one of the worst industrial catastrophes in American history.
Muriel Rukeyser’s text has stood as a witness to one of the worst industrial tragedies in American history, and Moore’s new analysis in this edition, along with her inclusion of the memorial list of the dead, heightens the power of the original text for old fans and new readers alike.
from The Book of the Dead: The Dam | The Poetry Foundation. By Muriel Rukeyser. Share. All power is saved, having no end. Rises. in the green season, in the sudden season. the white the budded. and the lost. Water celebrates, yielding continually. sheeted and fast in its overfall. slips down the rock, evades the pillars.
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.
Source: The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006)
The Book of the Dead first appeared in U.S. 1, a poet’s challenge to the maps of sight-seeking tourists. Rukeyser points us to what’s been overlooked: not “The World’s Largest Teapot,” but the nation’s largest industrial mining disaster, in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia.