A review by benplatt
The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser

4.0

A really carefully crafted piece of social and environmental justice witnessing that weaves together the corporate and industrial violence of the Hawk's Tunnel Disaster on the entire landscape of Gauley Bridge. Rukeyser moves between scales and subjects (human and nonhuman) with such deftness that she manages to effectively convey the specificity of this disaster while tying the forces at work here to greater social and environmental injustices, all in a matter of a fairly brief collection (half of this edition is comprised of a fairly lengthy essay) that moves between documentary, lyrical, and archival witnessing.