Muriel Rukeyser Quotes

Quotes about:

• What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Truth, World, Splits

  "Käthe Kollwitz" sec. 3, l. 25 (1968)

  52 Copy quote

• The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Peace, Science, Technology

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.135, Northwestern University Press

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• The 'idea' for the poem, which may come as an image thrown against memory, as a sound of words that sets off a traveling of sound and meaning, as a curve of emotion (a form) plotted by certain crises of events or image or sound, or as a title which evokes a sense of inner relations; this is the first 'surfacing' of the poem. Then a period of stillness may follow.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Memories, Ideas, Curves

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• As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace. Peace that is not lack of war, but fierce and positive.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  War, Fierce, Source

  Muriel Rukeyser, Janet E. Kaufman, Anne F. Herzog, Jan Heller Levi (2005). “The collected poems of Muriel Rukeyser”, Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

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• However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Confused, Goes On, May

  "The Life of Poetry". Book by Muriel Rukeyser. Chapter One: "The Fear of Poetry", 1949.

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• If we look long enough and hard enough ... we will begin to see the connections that bind us together, and when we recognize those connections, we will begin to change the world.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Long, Together, Connections

  11 Copy quote

• The journey is my home.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Travel, Home, Journey

  Muriel Rukeyser (1957). “One Life”, New York : Simon and Schuster

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• Reality is the completion of experience.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Reality, Completion

  "The Life of Poetry". Book by Muriel Rukeyser, p. 221, 1949.

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• I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Fall, Sacrifice, Thinking

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• American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Ideas, People, Democracy

  Muriel Rukeyser (2004). “Selected Poems”

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• If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Poetry, Would Be, World

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• Never to despise in myself what I have been taught
  to despise. Nor to despise the other.
  Not to despise the it. To make this relation
  with the it: to know that I am it.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Tolerance, Taught, Despise

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.138, Northwestern University Press

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• My lifetime listens to yours.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Love, Marriage, Lifetime

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.129, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Poetry, Poetic, Breathe

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.1, Northwestern University Press

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• I hear the singing of the lives of women. They clear mystery, the offering, and pride.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Pride, Offering, Singing

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• No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Book, Reading, Want

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• The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Poetry, Spirit, Source

  "Shadows and Miracles: Poems". Book by Cristina Necula (p. 7), 2007.

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• Exchange is creation.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Creation

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• Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling. A fine poem will seize your imagination intellectually - that is, when you reach it, you will reach it intellectually too - but the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Imagination, Poetry, Feelings

  "The Life of Poetry". Book by Muriel Rukeyser. Chapter One: "The Fear of Poetry", p. 8, 1949.

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• Punctuation is biological. It is the physical indication of the body-rhythms which the reader is to acknowledge.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Body, Language, Punctuation

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• The statement of ideas in a poem may have to do with logic. More profoundly, it may be identified with the emotional progression of the poem, in terms of the music and images, so that the poem is alive throughout. Another, more fundamental statement in poetry, is made through the images themselves those declarations, evocative, exact, and musical, which move through time and are the actions of a poem.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Moving, Emotional, Ideas

  "The Life of Poetry". Book by Muriel Rukeyser, p. 31, 1949.

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• Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Feelings, Approach, Poetry Is

  "The Life of Poetry". Book by Muriel Rukeyser. Chapter One: "The Fear of Poetry", 1949.

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• I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Vocabulary, Work Out, Silence

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.135, Northwestern University Press

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• Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Peace, War, Women

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• A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Art, Giving, Able

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