The Book of the Dead is a long narrative poem written by Muriel Rukeyser, appearing in her collection US 1. Published in 1938, the poem deals with the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, also known as the Gauley Tunnel Tragedy, in which predominately poor, migrant mine workers in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia succumbed to death caused by the occupational mining disease known as silicosis.[1]
Over the course of twenty poems, beginning with "The Road" and ending with "The Book of the Dead," Rukeyser takes her readers onto a journey into the disaster. The poem mixes and intersperses in a modernist and documentary manner testimony from the disaster, lines from the ancient Egyptian text Book of the Dead, along with lines from the Biblical story of Absalom.[2] The poem's title emerges from the Egyptian text, with Rukeyser quoting or referencing the ancient work throughout her poem.[2] As part of her experiential research for the poem, Rukeyser visited Gauley Bridge with Nancy Naumburg in 1936.[3]
Since its publication in 1938, The Book of the Dead has helped to establish her as an important poet of the twentieth century. It is a key example of the 1930s and 1940s tradition of documentary poetry and poetics,[4] a tradition which documentary poetics practitioner Mark Nowak describes as "lefter-than-liberal."[5] Among various other influences, one key influence for the poem is "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot.[6]