Walter Kalaidjian: On "Absalom"
[P]erhaps Rukeyser’s most stunning advance beyond proletcult and bourgeois aesthetics alike is her distinctively feminist rendering of social empowerment. To begin with, it is the mother’s compassionate narrative in the "Absalom" section that augurs women’s revisionary authority . . . . Mrs. Jones’ poignant story of the loss of three sons to silicosis stands out as the poem’s at once most desperate and heroic portrait. Failing to persuade the company’s doctor to examine or treat her sons for silicosis, she "went out on the road and begged the X-ray money" (28).