"All Power Is Saved": The Physics of Protest in Muriel Rukeyser's The Book of the Dead

Abstract

rites alluded to in its title, Muriel Rukeyser's twentydied from acute silicosis contracted in the early 1930s while they were digging a large tunnel for Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation at Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. Transformation provides the main trope for the sequence in several notable ways. First, water is changed into electricity: in representing the massive hydroelectric project for which the Gauley tunnel was constructed, the poems follow the generation of electrical power from the potential energy in the water vapor of clouds to the kinetic energy of sparks in live wires. Next, natural resources, including human lives, are transformed into monetary value: the poems trace the conversion of silica and acute silicosis into the daily stock quotations for Union Carbide as its profits rise along with water behind a dam. The transfer of human energy into public-works projects, such as roads and hydroelectric plants that serve people's needs long after the builders have gone, complements this conversion. The many roads that take you into your own country (10) and the Gauley tunnel complex become enduring monuments in the poems to the toil and suffering that made and modified them. Finally, historical evidence is transformed into lyrical poetry in the sequence. Throughout The Book of the Dead, documents including transcriptions of Senate hearings, legislative petitions, and personal testimony become confluent with hydrology and verbal imagery to establish what Walter