EJAC30 (3) PP.175-194 Intellect Limited 20l.l European Journal of American Culture Volume 30 Number 3 <C zo.n tntetlect Ltd Article. English language. dol: lO.1386/ejac.30.3.175_1zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA CATHERINE GANDER University of Nottingham The senses of Muriel Rukeyser's zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The Book of the Dead 1 ABSTRACTzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA When Muriel Rukeyser travelledzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA to Gauley Bridge in 1936 to report on the indus- trial disaster that had led to the deaths of over 700 miners, her findings led her to write what is arguably her masterpiece - the 1938 poem series The Book of the Dead. Of all Rukeyser's writings, this hybriit work bf documentary techniques and metaphors, of testimony and elegy, has attracted the most critical attention. However, analyses of the series have tended to focus on the ways in which the poet adopted and adapted documenta.ry methods in order to offer a leftist ideolog- ical critique on capitalist-born social injustice. The purpose of this article is not to negate such readings, but to offer alongside them insight into a more ethical-phil- osophical approach that [ believe guided Rukeyser's entire career. Via an exami- nation of the ways in which Rukeyser employs the human senses to articulate the complexities of human political, metaphysical and social relations, this article explores the influence of the Zionist Martin Buber on the poet. Rukeyser acknowl- edged Buber's writings in her later work, but I contend here that they played a large part in the formation of her poetics, especially in connection with her docu- mentary aesthetic. Whilst several critics have noted, albeit often superficially, the Marxist flavour of Rukeyser's poetry in The Book of the Dead, I argue for the influence of Buber over Marx in terms or responsibility, community and dialogue? Both Rukeyser's and Buber's methods of expressing and promoting these ethical necessities rely on a synaesthetic response to the world. Where Buber advances a ./ KEYWORDS senses ethical creation exchange synaesthetic witness 1. This article is an extended version of a paper I presented at the izth Annual English and American Literature Association Conference, held at Soochow university, Taipei, Taiwan, in November 2009,whose theme was 'literature and the senses'. 2. Although a Marxist reading of Rukeyser is entirely possible, it should be noted that it 175