If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.

She was 66. Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944) on the theme of Judaism as a gift was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books something Rukeyser said "astoniMuriel Rukeyserd" her as Muriel Rukeyser had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life. In addition to her poetry Muriel Rukeyser wrote a fictionalized memoir The Orgy plays and screenplays and translated work by Octavio Paz and Gunnar Ekelöf.

Muriel Rukeyser (December 15 1913 – February 12 1980) was an American poet and political activist best known for her poems about equality feminism social justice and Judaism. One of her most powerful pieces was a group of poems entitled The Book of the Dead (1938) documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.