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A Study Guide for Muriel Rukeyser's "St. Roach"
A Study Guide for Muriel Rukeyser's "St. Roach"
A Study Guide for Muriel Rukeyser's "St. Roach"
Ebook30 pages21 minutes

A Study Guide for Muriel Rukeyser's "St. Roach"

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for Muriel Rukeyser's "St. Roach," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 2, 2016
ISBN9781535834001
A Study Guide for Muriel Rukeyser's "St. Roach"

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    A Study Guide for Muriel Rukeyser's "St. Roach" - Gale

    08

    St. Roach

    Muriel Rukeyser

    1976

    Introduction

    Over the course of a poetic career that kept her in the international spotlight for more than forty years, Muriel Rukeyser established a reputation for concern about social justice. This concern is evident in St. Roach, which was published in her final book, The Gates, in 1976. On its surface, this poem is about the ways in which the poet was taught to view cockroaches with disgust and hatred, thinking of them only to plan ways to kill them. Not far below the surface, however, is a message about racial enmity or hostility. In the end, the poem offers a solution when the speaker looks at the cockroach and notices what is noble and beautiful about it.

    While Rukeyser has not been considered a major poet by critics, her work remains just shy of the distinction and has nevertheless garnered a lasting critical respect. In the years since her death in 1980, various collections of Rukeyser's poems have gone in and out of print. St. Roach can now be found in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (2005).

    Author Biography

    Muriel Rukeyser was born in New York, New York, on December 15, 1913. Her father, Lawrence, was a concrete salesman, and her mother, Myra, was a housewife who had been a bookkeeper. Rukeyser attended high school at a private school in the Bronx, the Fieldston School, and then went to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie before moving back to New York City to attend Columbia University. After finishing college, she returned to Poughkeepsie, and her passion for progressive politics began to show. Rukeyser, along with Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, and Eleanor Clark, created a new literary magazine, Student Review, to compete with the mainstream Vassar

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