Blasts from the Past: 40 Overlooked Masters Who Still Stire our Souls

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Muriel Rukeyser (1913?1980)
Poet, biographer, essayist, translator, playwright, children?s author, and tireless champion of the underclasses, Muriel Rukeyser is a model of the engaged writer. She wrote dense, resonant poetry that was determinedly high-cultural, but refused a poet?s detachment; her most famous act of poetic activism was an investigation and commemoration of the deaths of hundreds of workers poisoned by silica dust on a West Virginia hydroelectric project. Rukeyser was a ?daring visionary,? wrote critic Florence Howe, ?ahead of her time in thinking about the arts, their connection to science, their function in an increasingly merciless world.? (Book: A Muriel Rukeyser Reader; ed. by Jan Heller Levi; W.W. Norton, 1994)
?Joseph Hart

John Ruskin (1819?1900)
An odd man who lived a sheltered and sad life, Ruskin changed the world?s mind about the value of landscape painting, Gothic architecture, and medieval cities. As modern industrialism took ferocious hold in Victorian England, his lyrical and thoughtful books reminded the public about the pleasures and achievements of the past. A social critic as well as an artistic one, he also spoke out against the misuse of wealth and abuse of the working class. (Book: Selected Writings; ed. by Kenneth Clark; Penguin Classics, 1992) ?Jay Walljasper

Johann Stamitz (1717?1757)
The Czech-born director of the court orchestra at Mannheim, Germany, was one of the quiet transformers of classical music. Stamitz created a more complex version of the sonata form, with more intricate bass parts, and his demanding performance standards insured a new level of virtuosity and helped the Mannheim ensemble develop a ?bigger? and more beautiful sound than typical baroque players. His innovations charted a path to the classical symphony as practiced by Mozart. (CD: Johann Stamitz, Symphonies Vol. 1; Naxos, 1996)
?Jon Spayde

Wolfgang Koeppen (1906?1996)
West German writers, led by Gnter Grass, began facing up to the Nazi legacy in the 1960s. One novelist preceded them by a decade, and paid dearly for it. Koeppen?s novels of the 1950s portrayed ?good Germans? as still ruinously infected with Nazism. Critics savaged him, and he was unread for decades. While other German writers experimented with fragmentation, Koeppen presented his haunted characters in a rich, ironic language redolent of the old high culture of Wagner and Goethe. The result: books that don?t just indict Germany?they call a whole civilization to account. (Books: The Hothouse and Death in Rome; by Wolfgang Koeppen; both W.W. Norton, 2001) ?Jon Spayde

Jens Jensen (1860?1951)
A Danish immigrant, Jensen started out in the 1880s as a laborer for the Chicago Park District and ended up leaving a mark on the American landscape almost as distinctive as Central Park architect Frederick Law Olmsted?s. Adapting Prairie Style architecture?s emphasis on organic unity to the design of parks and gardens, Jensen created masterpieces such as Garfield, Humboldt, and Columbus parks in Chicago and The Clearing, his folk school in Wisconsin?s Door County. He also pioneered progressive approaches to landscape architecture: urban community gardens, neighborhood parks and playgrounds, the use of wildflowers and other native species in garden design, and citizen activism to preserve unique natural settings. (Web site: www.jensjensen.org)
?Jay Walljasper

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