Muriel Rukeyser Quotes

Quotes about:

Emotions Poetry Reality War

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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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)

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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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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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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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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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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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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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Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness

Muriel Rukeyser

Peace, War, Women

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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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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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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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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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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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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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The journey is my home.

Muriel Rukeyser

Travel, Home, Journey

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

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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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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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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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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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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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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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Born: December 15, 1913
Died: February 12, 1980
Occupation: Poet
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