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)

  55 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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• 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

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• What three things can never be done? / Forget. Keep silent. Stand alone

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Three, Done, Forget

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.37, 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

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• 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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• 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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• Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  New Beginnings, Blessing, All Things

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.105, Northwestern University Press

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• A world is to be fought for, sung, and built: Love must imagine the world.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  World, Imagine, Built

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.102, Northwestern University Press

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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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• 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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• Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Peace, War, Women

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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

  14 Copy quote

• 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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• Let us not fear the hidden. Or each other.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Fear

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.62, Northwestern University Press

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• Try to live as if there were a God

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Life, God, Trying

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.54, Northwestern University Press

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• One writes in order to feel.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Writing, Order, Feels

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.23, Northwestern University Press

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• The journey is my home.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Travel, Home, Journey

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

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• The universe of poetry is the universe of emotional truth. Our material is in the way we feel and the way we remember.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Emotional, Poetry, Way

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• In time of crisis, we summon up our strength. Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Memories, Self, Long

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

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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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• 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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• Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Time, All Things, Seeds

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.105, Northwestern University Press

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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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• 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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