by Muriel Rukeyser

"Rukeyser’s Houdini is the most exhilarating, disturbing and triumphant theatre script I’ve read since Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Ahead of time and timeless, like most Rukeyser writings, it lifts straight off the page into the imagination."
— Adrienne Rich

"One strange and beautiful verse drama, this is a metaphorically lush and wryly incisive interpretation of the psyche and art of Harry Houdini.... Houdini inspires Rukeyser to ponder our love/hate relationship with our body, our desire for magic and acceptance of illusion, the link between exhibitionism and exorcism, and the eroticism of bondage and the myth of escapism....And then there’s his wife Bess, emblematic, for Rukeyser, of longing and stoicism, who utters one of the poet’s most resounding lines, ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.’"
— Donna Seaman, Booklist

"A fabulous addition to Houdini literature. Everyone interested in Houdini needs this book!"
— Sidney H. Radner, former curator of the Houdini Museum and honorary curator of the Houdini Historical Center